*NOTICE* - this thread is designed to play a as a defensive toolbox based token swarm deck. If you are looking for a competitive deck to combo out with or play against competitive combo, I would look elsewhere. This deck can play very well but if the end goal is a competitive setting, it will likely not be anywhere near fast enough. The best way to describe this deck is as somewhat of a pillowfort style of token swarm.
Why Play Rebels?
Welcome to the wonderful world of rebels. Rebels are an interesting tribe originally out of Masques block and returned in Time Spiral block and is sprinkled lightly across a few other sets. Rebels and Mercenaries are the two tribes that were ever designed as tutoring based tribes. Mercenaries sadly have no legend to run them as a main focus of a deck though. Rebels are the more popular tribe of the two and have seen print in two different blocks in part due to their popularity. For a quick snipit background on Lin Sivvi herself from our very own wiki:
Quote from MTGS Wikki on Lin Sivvi »
Liin Sivi or Lin Sivvi was the daughter of the elderly leader of the Vec tribe on Rath in the time leading up to the Phyrexian Invasion. She was amongst the most skilled warriors of the Vec and an expert in the use of the tribe's traditional weapon, the toten-vec or Lashknife. Following the disorder that resulted from Volrath's disappearance, she led a group of rebels into the Stronghold with Eladamri, hoping to destroy the Predator. The plan failed, but Sivvi and Eladamri used Belbe's personal portal to get to Dominaria along with Starke's daughter, Takara, whom they rescued from the dungeons of the Stronghold.
They arrived near Llanowar and began preparing the locals for the coming invasion. Eladamri became a uniter of peoples during the invasion, Sivvi ever at his side. The warriors' respect between the two blossomed into an ill-fated love over the year of the war; they chose to end their lives together rather than be killed by Yawgmoth when the lord of Phyrexia came to Dominaria himself.
Lin Sivvi's Pros:
She has a cheap casting cost so she can get in early and replaying her is generally easy.
She has very flexible abilities which allow tutoring for and recycling of spent rebels.
Her tutoring tends to be defensive in nature and tends to pull a lot less hate than the usual tutor commanders.
Being that the tutor targets are more reactive, the deck plays itself out very differently than most tutoring decks.
Rebels provide a means of card advantage in mono white.
There are a lot of elements of pillowforting when looking at a draw / go style of defensive toolbox deck. This can be a pro or a con depending on your feeling of this style of play.
Shuffling constantly can be annoying and add time to a game. It also requires you to somewhat know your toolbox and when and what tools to access when.
The toolboxing we have access to is primarily defensive. This means that tutoring into the next card isn't necessarily getting us closer to closing out the game.
We are limited to mono white which is often considered the weakest mono color (due to lack of good card draw).
The deck does not win quickly. It is best suited for longer games of EDH where people are not comboing off. In some ways this makes it a little more casual as well.
Playing Mono White
Not to discourage any readers but you need to realize going in that mono white is incredibly difficult to play as. Mono white is generally known as the weakest color when considering mono color deckbuilding due to lack of card draw and tutors. Luckily, due to how rebels function they actually bypass some of these issues. If your commander gets tucked we have a lot of other rebels who can tutor her back into play. Our tutor function gives us access to more cards and functionality thus operating as virtual card advantage as we get a resource we didn't have to draw.
Even with the issues of card advantage and tucking somewhat addressed, rebels are weak utility based creatures. We do often have to rely on other cards to give us threats rather than trying to slow roll 10 rebels into play and swarm out with them. I personally use my rebel package on multiple levels between access to a wincon (Mirror Entity) as well as defensive protection to survive to late game. This is by no means the only direction to build rebels but it is currently the direction I will go into detail about in this thread. If you are interested, it would also be possible to consider utilizing an equipment approach which could use the utility rebels with swords and such to get work done. This style of build would likely look at picking up mass LD assuming you are ok with that style of build and or possibly some stax tactics. Generally speaking, without thinking real hard outside of the box though you are going to look at building rebels in a direction of swarm style of tokens or equipment and LD / Stax.
For those interested, mono white does also have a few combo options if you really want to go there. My issue though is that generally speaking, if you are willing to play combo then your opposition is probably playing combo as well. White doesn't have access to the counterspells, draw, and tutors to really pull combo off effectively so if you are more of a combo player, its an option but I generally dont really suggest playing mono white as a combo player. Rebels in specific have access to an infinite life combo, but setting up a combo for infinite life isnt that great as there are lots of ways to be defeated still in this format outside of doing damage. The few times I have seen the infinite life combo pulled off, that player proceeded to loose next.
Alternate Commander Options:
I will try to outline some alternative options if you feel that Lin Sivvi might not fit your needs. Obviously there will be difficulties transitioning my own deck / strategies to a different commander but some elements or feel might be able to transfer. This is just me hypothetically pointing towards other options that "Could" work rather than suggestions for builds. I am just going to hit on similar type of builds though or this will just get too large in general.
Rebel Based
Gaddock Teeg - Teeg offers some wrath protection to the deck as well as opening to to access to green. Green can offer ramp, draw, and creature tutors which are all very nice things. Green itself only really contributes a few rebels (Skyshroud Poacher, Chameleon Colossus, and Changeling Titan. The other changelings are junk: Game-Trail Changeling and Woodland Changeling). The big upside of green is probably primarily the wrath protection and utility. This can be a solid way to go for sure but Teeg is often heavily targeted if he matters and it really does take some the the priority away from playing rebels. You are also at the mercy of draws to some extent to get the rebel chain going.
Captain Sisay - Sisay can tutor for Lin Sivvi and Gaddock Teeg, so theoretically, she could play very similarly as teeg as the commander. The problem here is, generally speaking she is just better being a sisay deck and not worrying about rebels. Rebels pick up card advantage but that's something sisay does on her own anyways.
Cho-Manno, Revolutionary - Cho is the only other rebel legend currently other than Lin Sivvi. Sadly, he really doesn't have any direct interaction with being a rebel deck. While being a cool guy, I dont know what being the commander of a deck would really do for him. He is sort of underwhelming to really consider as a commander.
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Derevi allows untapping of permanents which can be useful for chaining tap abilities together for multiple uses in a turn. It also opens us up to more colors which is nice but it also takes away from the rebel theme.
Equipment Based (Mono White)
Eight-and-a-Half-Tails he can protect himself and his gear with his ability to protect. His ability to swing through blockers is also useful in general. He has a low starting cost which helps him get in early and start some beats. I have seen him played as a sort of controlling and anti control based voltron commander. It is amusing as he can force opposing creatures to shrug equipment and auras by means of his protection granting.
Isamaru, Hound of Konda the cheapest of the mono white commanders and a solid p/t for his cost. Put some equiment / auras on him and go to town.
Kemba, Kha Regent she is designed for equipment and gets a crazy big cat army very quickly afterwards. She works well with resource denial and stax based tactics as she delivers free resources every turn and in general often gets wrathed / tucked due to being a very centric part of her deck. She brings a very strong army with her though making her very good against opposing aggro decks but sort of vulnerable to control due to a bit of a later starting time, low initial power, and some ramp up time.
Odric, Master Tactician combat control + equipment go very very well together. Put a Infiltration Lens on a junk creature then force someone to quad block it for delicious value or play captain no blocks. Swords will get through a lot with this guy and the old jitte does some great things for this style of deck. He is a really flavorful and cool commander, unfortunately, its not really hard to just wrath him off the board and its hard to not get tucked in this style of deck.
Token Based (Mono White)
Crovax, Ascendant Hero he acts as an anthem that is really hard to ever be permenantly done with. He dodges most forms of tuck and removal by bouncing to hands as well. He is also useful against a lot of opposing token decks as you can kill off some opposing tokens just by him being in play and you can remove his buff in a pinch when you need to.
Darien, King of Kjeldor he plays sort of a suicide token build. City of Brass and other things to do damage to yourself and generate tokens. People also have to sort of weigh their options when considering attacking this player.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite she buffs the tokens decently and removes a lot of opposing creatures at the same time.
Mikaeus, the Lunarch every time he can tap, he can generate value. He can add several buffs to a few tokens to make them rather potent. You can also use untap effects to force him to buff several times in succession.
Odric, Master Tactician being that he needs 3 other creatures attacking with him, building sort of token based is an option here.
History / Bio
~~~~~Deck History~~~~~
I have always liked toolboxing especially the idea of having a commander who can toolbox themsleves. The problem I tend to have with them though is that they are EXTREMELY BORING and tend to play out similarly each game because most tutoring commanders have specific things they try to assemble in specific orders. Due to the fact that rebels are so defensive in nature, their games tend to play very very differently. I dont have a specific tutor order to go with the rebels and thats sort of what made me really like them initially.
I initially build my rebel deck as sort of an equipment based deck. It would use rebels to connect the equipment and generate some value through that means. It was a fun way to play it but I realized more and more that it lacked much for surprise output. It was sort of linear due to most of the equipment not really having a big punch behind it. I also realized that I was using Mirror Entity a lot as a means to sort of swarm at people but didnt really build the deck to swarm initially. Over time, I started playing the deck more defensively and using more tokens as my means of killing people.
I initially built my rebel deck as the second or third attempt at mono white. One of my biggest background issues with mono white had been its lack of card advantage and how much trouble it gets into when the commander gets tucked. Due to all of this, rebels have sort of stuck with me as one of the better things to do in mono white after playing it for some time.
~~~~~Personal Bio~~~~~
My name is Brian, I am 27 years old, I am a spike player who loves to win and tweak his lists. I live out in South Dakota sort of in the middle of nowhere. I got into playing EDH back in the summer of 2010. Our playgroup started sort of small and we went on and off on EDH play but eventually it took off and most of us sort of started dying off from other formats and only playing EDH. We get together on Tuesday nights where we often see 4-12 guys together down at the shop and just play 4+ hours of EDH every week. I got to be sort of one of the big shot players in my group where a lot of times people would just swing things at me because that's the player I am regardless of what deck I bring to the table. I try to build decks with the mentality that everyone might be attacking me and I might have to fend off more than one opponent. While I love perfecting my decks, I don't particularly like utilizing combos so if I have a combo in my deck it is usually because it has multi purposes that can be utilized to go infinite if it is drawn in that way. I am a spike player who loves the big plays but I also love building synergy throughout my decks. I try to build my decks with different concepts and feels to them so that I can change decks and have a very different gameplan with each of my decks.
I have played magic since hummm I guess like 1996 or 1997. I have been playing magic since Ice Age but that was when I was in like 4th grade so obviously I was not the player then that I am now. I picked up on playing standard FNM a lot in high school where I played a lot in the Odyssey / Onslaught blocks. I played into Mirrodin then quit when Kokusho started beating everyone up. I am glad he is finally off of the banlist for singleton play as I think its good to have him back in action.
I am back to playing magic again and have been playing standard since Zendikar came out. I go back and forth on my thoughts of Standard but regardless I love playing EDH. I recently stopped playing standard again sometime just before Avacyn Restored was released due to my own personal issues with the direction Wizards is trying to push standard away from control. I still dabble at standard a little bit but I really have a strong dislike for the current direction Wizards is going with standard. Still, I stay strong as a Commander player.
I have built more EDH decks than I can count up anymore. I am quite good at dropping staple cards into a list which is really unfortunate. I keep the number of decks I have constructed to somewhat of a minimum. I don't like replicating how decks feel so I sort of go with colors / strategies I don't already have. I am sort of an aggro / control player who tends to for the most part not focus heavily on combos. I usually tend to be playing 2-3 decks at a time so if I have more decks than that it tends to be because they have earned their keep and stick around due to that but don't get played much.
Deckstats for this deck can be found here. (Last updated 3/16/15)
Building on a Budget
I realized that I sort of consider my rebel deck one of my more budget lists but in reality, it has a lot of expensive cards in it. I wanted to come up with a build for those looking to experience rebels while not blowing their wallet to do so. That being said, here is a nice budget friendly rebel build. Luckily, the rebels themselves are actually quite cheap to acquire so I think if anything, running the same rebel package and or possibly adding to it is a good thing to look at in a budget friendly build. Since the list will have a little less power to it, I would rather add a few more rebels to the toolbox to make up for it and expand the options of how to rebel tutor.
If you want to cut further, you could cut the landbase back to entirely plains or anything in between. I think springing for Emeria, the Sky Ruin at the very least is a useful move but all of the utility lands are really optional. The more you cut back on the landbase, the less good Weathered Wayfarer becomes.
Deckstats.net gave me a price around $150.00 for the above budget list. Cutting the landbase back to mostly plains it went down to around $135.00. At the time of writing this content up. My primary list run at approximately $400.00 according to deckstats.net. For me, $400.00 for a deck is actually fairly cheap considering I didn't really spare myself any expenses in creating this deck but I realize that many might have an issue with that sort of price tag which is why I made a budget friendly list that should still give a lot of the experience of the list.
Strategy
~~~~~Deck Objectives~~~~~
This deck is designed to play as a defensive toolboxing style of pillowfort. Its primary winconditions tend to be token swarm tactics that it establishes in the mid to late game. Throughout the game, the access to the rebel toolbox works as a deterrent and utility toolbox to stall for time and generate value. Due to several of the means to lock up, tap down, trade block, chump block, and recover life lost in a turn we make ourselves a bad target for most creatures that might consider coming our direction (this is why I classify it as a form of pillowfort even though it does not use the usual cards and tactics of a pillowfort deck).
Quote from MTGS Wiki, Pillowforting Defined »
Pillowfort is a strategy for certain multiplayer formats, particularly Commander. The strategy is political in nature, attempting to make being attacked by an opponent undesirable or futile, thus making the rest of the opponents attack each other. This is achieved through cards that prevent damage or punishing players for attacking, so called Pillows. This also allows players enough time to assemble a combo or series of plays which let them win the game.
Popular "Pillow" cards
No Mercy and Dread kill creatures that have successfully dealt damage to the Pillowfort player.
Isperia, Supreme Judge is a popular Commander for Pillowfort decks since she draws additional cards when its controller is being attacked.
Spike Weaver prevents combat damage repeatedly, and is particularly effective when combined with reanimation or a method of putting +1/+1 counters on it.
Looking at my list offhand, you might expect that I try to swarm with rebels and kill people, that is actually far from the direction I try to go with this deck. Tutoring into a swarm of rebels is extremely slow and inefficient. People can see it coming a long ways out and generally you will get wrathed before that happens. If someone puts a large portion of your tutoring rebels in your graveyard, you become more vulnerable to tuck removal as you have less of the rebels that can recover Lin Sivvi to play. Due to this, I tend to play out enough rebels to be able to work with but I dont necessarily try to maximize my creatures in play due to what I mentioned earlier that its a good way to get wrathed. Instead, I rely on several means to make large token waves at instant speed (White Sun's Zenith, Decree of Justice (cycled), Miracle a Entreat the Angels (Sensei's Divining Top and Scroll Rack help this), Luminarch Ascension, Mobilization, and Sacred Mesa all help me turn mana into creatures relatively fast.
The primary goal of this deck though, is just continue to live. Shift things around you as best as you can allowing opponents to beat each other up as much as possible. This deck has fairly good surprise burst damage to kill one and possibly two opponents but it tends to be really difficult to kill three players in one shot without crazy silly things lining up correctly. Play defensively and let your opponents beat each other up all they want.
~~~~~Using Lin Sivvi~~~~~
Due to the fact that this deck is a defensive toolbox deck, it can be difficult for me to tell others how to play the deck as every game will be very different based on what commanders and tactics you are up against. The general gist of the deck though is to protect itself from harm and so I guess I can walk through some fairly normal situations you might encounter and how I play Lin Sivvi arround them.
Lin Sivvi Breakdown: Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero is a very key part of our deck. let me do a bit of a breakdown on her and her abilities real quick then I will sort of go over my basic plans for her.
Casting Cost - Lin Sivvi costs 1WW which is generally what I would classify as a cheap commander. This means that she can come in early and be recast several times over the course of the game without too much of an issue.
Power / Toughness - As a 1/3, Lin Sivvi can chump block small ETB and utility dorks in the early game saving us from random early pokes. She has enough toughness to not die on her own to Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite / Massacre Wurm effects either. One of the biggest things to note is that she doesn't die to Sword of Fire and Ice triggers as its probably one of the most annoying things to have happen repeatedly for a utility based commander centric deck. Overall, her improved toughness is greatly appreciated rather than if she had been a 2/2 or something of the sort.
Tutor Capabilities - Lin Sivvi has the cheapest activation cost for fetching other rebels in comparison to their mana costs as she simply has to pay their cost rather than paying one additional. She also scales allowing us to retrieve any of our rebels rather than overpaying for the cheap ones or not being able to fetch the higher cost ones. She has the strongest of the rebel search abilities.
Tuck Capabilities - Lin Sivvi has the ability to put rebels from the graveyard back into the deck. This means she can recycle spent utility creatures on her own. This is an incredibly useful ability as there are several rebels whose function is essentially to die or be sacrificed and so this ability allows us to recycle them back into the deck and back into our toolbox. I have on occasion used an ability like Land Tax to overfill my hand thus allowing me to discard and then tuck rebels that happened to be drawn.
Overall, Lin Sivvi is a very fundamental card to this deck's success. We run several backup tutoring creatures in case she is tucked, but their primary function is to pull her back out so she can be used again. I often prioritize bringing Lin Sivvi out into play if she is not already in play. I am also willing to give up resources to keep her in play if I have the option. If she is repeatedly targeted by removal it is a large hindrance to the performance of this deck. Generally speaking though, since we play as a defensive build style of deck we usually dont get repeatedly hated on directly by opponents.
Rebel Package Breakdown:
In general, I tend to try to keep a second tutoring rebel in play when I have time and can afford to do so. Having a second tutoring rebel in play gives you a backup plan if someone attempts to spot tuck Lin Sivvi and in general just gives people a reason not to bother doing so. Outside of trying to get a second tutoring rebel though, your priorities are defending yourself and your board state. Try to have defenses established before someone swings at you if possible to keep from having to respond to their attack with tutoring. This keeps more options available and having less pants down sort of moments. There is no hard and fast progression for the rebels since most of them have priorities of just keeping us and our boardstate alive. Play with things a bit and figure out what your own priorities are. Each game can be very different depending on who you are playing against. These are most of the rebels I consider grabbing and the situation where I grab them.
Defiant Falcon I tend to prioritize having a second tutoring rebel in play in case of spot tuck removal. If Lin Sivvi is tapped and you dont have another tutoring rebel in play, opponents will consider tucking Lin Sivvi so having a second tutoring rebel really does help just shift the spot tuck down to something else. I often try tutoring for this first assuming I am not being harrassed or have to beat someone else's fast beats deck. The fact that it has flying is really the reason I tend to value this particular rebel over the other two mana tutoring rebels. In a pinch, I will not hesitate to use it as a chump blocker. Other than the capabilities to chump block or swing out with a sword more effectively, any two mana tutoring rebel could be used in its stead.
Bound in Silence this, is one of our most powerful tools that we have access to. Make sure you know where you want it to go as its a pain if there is a bigger threat / issue that needs it later. Due to how tutoring auras into play works, you dont have to target what it goes on so you can put it right on hexproof and shrouded commanders. If you know where this needs to go and another problematic creature comes along, my suggestion would be to use Defiant Vanguard if possible or look to chump block it go get Whipcorder to tap it down. In the case of a fast commander like Kaalia though, I generally dont hesitate to lock her up if you can and force them to slow play the game. Keep in mind, if opponents are not specifically "declaring their attack phase," you can push them back for skipping phases after they turn sideways at you and use Bound in Silence / Whipcorder tap them down before they can declare attacks. If someone is deliberately specifying that they are "declaring their attack phase," you can probably assume that means they are coming at you anyways. Smart opponents will get the hang of this and realize that they can declare attacks against others by means of not announcing their changing phases and just outright declare the attack against someone else.
Lawbringer / Lightbringer if I am playing against a red or black deck I often tutor for these guys immediately following a target that would be sufficient to use these on. I sometimes will tutor for them ahead of time just to save time and have them ready for immediate use such as against decks that run Lightning Greaves and such but in general, I prefer to wait until after a target I want to remove. They can also be used with Distorting Lens for amazing effect to shoot down any creature. Play with it a bit as there are benefits to pre-emptively tutoring these guys and advantages in waiting until they are needed. Thousand-Year Elixir can also be very useful to just allow these guys to be used immediately and remove any openings for spot removing them. In general, multiplayer EDH is a format of multicolored decks and often I will find one or two decks that I can use at least one of these two guys on. Being able to harass commanders if nothing else is still very useful.
Defiant Vanguard generally speaking, just knowing he is in your deck will keep people away from you. Its nice to drop him in against a random Sun Titan or something swinging on the ground. This guy is sort of the bread and butter defense against ground fatties. He can work nicely against a lot of ground based voltron commanders as well assuming they dont randomly start flying which Uril occasionally does. In general, I try not to have him in play other than right when I go to use him as there is no reason to expose him to a potential exile wrath or something of the sort. The fact that he can rebel tutor is useful for digging Lin Sivvi out if she gets tucked too as it increases our number of outs for that.
Whipcorder its nice utility for just gumming up the aggro guys. Versatility wise, you can open up defenses on someone else for people to swing at them or keep that big eldrazi from swinging at you. I tend to go get this guy when someone gets a big fatty out that I dont specifically want to use my Bound in Silence on. It can also be very political in how you use this guy as if they know how to skip phases and do outright attacks, they can attack someone else. If they declare attackers or try to attack you, you can rewind them to declaring attackers phase for skipping phases and tap it down then. My favorite setup is having this guy in play with the ability to go get Bound in Silence as needed if they try to break through my Whipcorder. I dont tend to use Whipcorder a ton just because I would generally rather drop Defiant Vanguard into a block but occasionally something like an eldrazi will come along and the ability to control them is incredibly useful.
Children of Korlis there are a few uses for this rebel in the list. One of the big things I really love about the children is using them to combat Sorin Markov, Magister Sphinx, Debt to the Deathless, and Exsanguinate effects. If you have a large portion of mana up, its possible to net gain life from an opponent doing these effects as well by means of tutoring for the children, using them, tucking them, tutoring them a second time with another rebel, and using them again. They work well to deter random big beats or at least stall them out a bit as well. I also run Phyrexian Processor in this list which they can be used to recover the life paid into it allowing for making 20/20 or 30/30+ sized tokens in here. Again, if you have crazy mana you can set up a situation where you net gain life from doing this too. I dont tend to use the children that often but having access to them is quite nice.
Rappelling Scouts when you just need a wall of a rebel to bounce things off of you, this guy is a nice pick. The protection option is a nice way to push away flyers or ground pounders and a high toughness makes it so we have something that can bounce off random sword guys occasionally without need to pay mana.
Changeling Hero I often use this guy to protect Lin Sivvi from wraths. If someone has a tuck wrath, this is about the best thing you can do as it keeps you from getting your commander tucked and the rebels going back into the deck isn't that big of a deal generally. It really just gets us going again faster by having access to champion Lin Sivvi with him. I dont pull him out very often outside of that but you can occasionally need a lifegain beater where he could be handy. Its really unfortunate to draw this guy as it takes away most all of his useful functionality. It can be a bit awkward to champion Lin Sivvi if someone then counterspells the wrath effect.... Its rare for that to happen though and you still have a decent beater on the ground that can probably chump the bad things that are happening. Tutoring for Changeling Hero ahead of time and then dropping a tuck wrath can be a valid tactic as well which is why I include some tuck wraths. Watch out for instant speed spot removal though in that situation though.
Mirror Entity this is one of my primary wincons. I generally wait to have a big wave of creatures and use this guy to make them into huge beaters. Being a rebel is really handy for grabbing him as needed. Watch out for spot removal and split second junk with him as well. I tend to focus on making as big of an army as possible and then I sacrifice some power to tutor him into play on my turn rather than pre-emptively as it removes the risk of him being spot removed. Once he is in play, I tend to just dump the mana and make things big to get past split second which has occasionally been an issue if you see opponents running it.
I didn't bother mentioning most of the other tutoring rebels because I tend to try not to have a lot of them in play at the same time in case of a wrath or tuck wrath. Keeping a good quantity of them in the deck is usually a good thing so that we have options if Lin Sivvi does get tucked. I will occasionally tutor for them assuming I am just about to go on the offensive or if I just need something to act as a road block chump and dont want to give up any of my good utility to do so. Most of them are just here for redundancy though really.
~~~~~Game Progression~~~~~
Opening Hand / Mulligans
Generally speaking, I try to focus on my mana primarily in the opening hand. I always try to cycle away the rebels in my opening hand given the option but having a tutoring rebel still in hand can be useful in case of getting tucked. I generally try to push them back in the deck regardless though and get more useful resources. Ramp and draw are usually good things to try to pick up on. Make sure to push the utility rebels back into your deck if doing partial Paris mulligans even if it results in putting a card in the deck and not drawing a card as they are better to have access through the toolbox than in hand. I try not to have big mana cards and X mana cards in my opening hand and try to push for mana, ramp, and draw if possible in the opener. Lin Sivvi and the rebel toolbox should help defend and stall for time generally speaking. If you see a commander you know will be a problem you can try to keep some control in the opener as well as I have seen Kaalia tuck or spot remove Lin Sivvi before playing out their commander.
Early Game
Hit lands and ramp as consistently as you can. Drop Lin Sivvi when you hit 3 mana and try to keep mana up to get some rebel friends if you can but prioritize ramp once she is in play until you have enough mana to work with. Try to defend yourself but if possible, try to let some of the early game decks run around you rather than answering them. Ideally, you want to make yourself a bad target but allow the game to continue around you.
Mid Game
Continue hitting lands and drawing cards as best as you can. Try not to overdo your board state as it will encourage wraths. Just sort of maintain enough of a presence to be difficult to do anything to rather than make people think you are about to go offensive. Sometimes this means that you dont tutor for a rebel at end of turn or you get a rebel that doesn't matter like grabbing a Lawbringer or Lightbringer in a game they cannot be used in order to utilize them as chump block shields. Whenever possible try to keep 5 mana up in the mid and late game so that you can have access to Changeling Hero when the wraths do drop. Prioritize living, drawing cards, and hitting land drops / ramp.
Late Game
This is where you want to start figuring out how you might be able to put pressure on people and kill of players. The general go to option for trying to kill opponents is doing an end of turn token swarm followed by Mirror Entity plus a huge buff on your turn. Be careful with this though as generally speaking, its very very hard to kill everyone in one shot with this tactic so try to remove those in the best postion and those who can probably answer you best if you go for it. Obviously killing everyone is the best priority if you can afford to do it but sometimes its not an option. Eldrazi, Phyrexian Processor, Luminarch Ascension and random token swarm / rebel beats are also options but ideally you wont have to kill everyone from full life at this point in time. If you dont see anything that will work as a wincon then just try to keep living and pushing people around for as long as you can. If the opponents start dwindling then the option of going with the rebel army beats is an option but I tend to try to avoid that with a full game of opponents.
~~~~~Build Styles / Packages~~~~~
Generally speaking, there is always more than one way to build any commander. I myself went with the token based build because the natural access to Mirror Entity makes for a strong wincondition. There are several other ways to try to build though if you wanted to which I will try to shed some light on in case you want to pick up a package or run with your list in a different direction.
Equipment :
White has several ways in which it can tutor for equipment and recover artifacts as well. Stoneforge Mystic, Stonehewer Giant, Steelshaper's Gift and Enlightened Tutor are among some of the stronger effects that can be utilized to tutor for equipment. There are several evasive rebels as well that can serve the purpose of a delivery system. My issue with building around equipment when I tried it is that rebels are so small on their own that it was hard to make their damage stack up all that effectively. It also takes up mana on your turn to do the equipping and it can aggravate or provoke opponents when you poke them with your value generating equipment. In general, I think that building equipment based works better when considering adding masslanddestruction and or staxbased tactics to the deck. Equipment take a while to grind opponents out so without screwing with opponents resources, I had a hard time making the equipment explosive enough to really take anyone by surprise.
Anthem:
There are a lot of anthem type of effects in white and being a tribal deck we have access to a few more useful ones. In general, I would say that most anthems dont add enough of a buff to get away with running them in multiplayer EDH but I will mention a few good ones worth consideration. I would try not to go with the lower powered Glorious Anthem / Crusade type of effects in general unless you are looking to make the list a bit more casual as I dont think these anthems add enough power for spending a card on them. They do have a little bit of help though against opponents dropping things like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite though.
Mirror Entity it fits into the rebel toolbox so we can fetch it as we need it. Its also very versatile in how large it can scale. The fact that it makes our creatures changelings as well can randomly pick up on other tribal buffs or make a very large Coat of Arms buff.
Gauntlet of Power it gives a small power and toughness buff while also giving a large output on mana.
Caged Sun it gives a small power and toughness buff while also giving a large output on mana.
Coat of Arms it can give a large power and toughness buff but it also relies on the 1 + 1 rebel style of build which in my opinion often gets wrathed too easily. Its a nice large anthem though.
Leonin Sun Standard its essentially just half as efficient as Mirror Entity so I like it less but its also a scaling anthem buff.
Marshal's Anthem generally speaking, due to Lin Sivvi's ability to tuck rebels I like this a lot less here than I do in some other random aggro decks. If you run a high number of non rebels that you want to rez, I can see this being useful but in average I was not very happy to tap out at sorcery speed to rez a bunch of rebels.
Cathars' Crusade its big potential for a big buff but it also really gives itself away. I almost feel like you need a swarm of guys, then on your turn you play this, then get a second swarm of guys is what needs to happen. Its just sooooooooooooooo slow to do anything is my issue. I think reliably, I could probably drop this and get like 1-3 triggers afterwards but its so much work and so slow.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite she gives a great effect, but after watching her backfire on me once or twice I cut her personally from my list. If someone steals her from deck or from play you will be hurting. In the end, I didn't like the potential for backfire enough to stop including her in my own list.
Mass Land Destruction:
Most playgroups will sort of frown on using mass land destruction. We have a lot of good defensive creatures though so if you can get a good board state under you, blowing up the lands can be a good way to push your way to some good value generation. I would look to run more value over time effects and keep the mana curve low in general when looking at running this sort of tactic. Its also usually good to consider your playgroup's feelings on these sort of tactics before just springing this on them.
Combo:
There are a few combos that are accessible to mono white and rebels in specific. Generally speaking, my feeling on using them is that if you are using combos, your opponents are probably using them too. Mono white combo will almost always loose to multicolored, blue, green, and black who are running control and combo though. I really wouldnt suggest playing mono white at all if your playgroup is looking to play combo games. If you are interested though, here are a few combos that can be assembled in mono white:
Most of white's access to playing stax is through means of things coming intoplay tapped or not untapping. There are also a few select traditional stax effects like Smokestack that white also has access to. In general, I would say that these tactics are about as frowned upon as mass land destruction on average though. Personally, I would do some small scale testing on this type of strategy to see if you like it before devoting $$$ to trade or buy into the cards to run this. Stax can be a very fun archetype but it comes down to the player and the meta to see how fun this sort of strategy can be. I am just saying that I would be hesitant to push this hard as something people will enjoy playing because generally most people hate playing against stax.
~~~~~Strengths / Weaknesses~~~~~
Strengths:
This deck is very very good at dealing with voltron commanders and plays well against most styles of control and aggro decks. Due to the ability to dig itself out of being commander tucked and cheat creatures into play it plays well against the control decks. Voltron commanders have a hard time with several of our defensive capabilities and in general we can use this against them to use them somewhat like a puppet assuming they will allow us to do so and attack other enemies or we put a chain on them.
This deck is very good at looking less threatening than it is. Rebels are weak utility based creatures and as such, you can usually slip under the radar. People will often not really even realize that you are playing somewhat pillowfort due to the nontraditional effects we utilize.
Weaknesses:
This deck has a few weaknesses as its stands currently. Some of these can be overcome somewhat by changing design slightly and some will just never go away due to being mono white in nature.
Combo - the problem this deck has with combo is that generally speaking the concept of pillow fort is to push people over to other people and not really be all that aggressive in nature. This means we sort of leave the act of dealing with the combo player to the other people at the table. The one advantage we have is that we are playing draw / go style of play which means we tend to have our mana up in most situations. You can use this to your advantage and play heavier spot removal and such to screw with combo pieces as they try to go off. It is however rather difficult to but the pressure on them though outside of just assembling the swarm before they can go off. Try to focus more on the disruption factor than beating them to going off because its a lot harder to race them. You can also consider utilizing things like Jester's Cap to try to scramble combo pieces and Lapse of Certainty to slow them down.
Swarm - overrun decks can be a huge pain in the but to deal with in this deck. These decks tend to take a very large number of creatures and turn them sideways while making them +/+ to make it a giant swarm of kill everyone. This deck plays similarly but isnt real fast about going off. You can defend yourself from swarm style of decks by packing fog effects, and possibly just using more traditional pillowfort effects like Ghostly Prison. Higher wrath counts can also occasionally help but it really depends on how they are swarming and how quickly they can strap together lethal damage. Gaining life is an effective way to lessen the punch of these type of decks as if they dont kill you in one shot, you can use Children of Korlis to recover but generally speaking, these decks output very very large numbers when they go off so the amount of life you gain generally needs to be somewhat substantial. These type of decks often sort of centrally focus on a commander or some specific type of cards so if you can tuck their commander they tend to be hurt by it. Try to focus on their buff effects and key cards and you can generally keep this from being overly problematic. They tend to be more explosive than we are though and our defenses dont work as well against them.
Mass Land Destruction - In the current build that I utilize, I use big mana to kill opponents via big X mana spwans and Mirror Entity. If you regularly face mass LD as a tactic, you might consider shifting a little bit more into considering equipment tactics. Reducing the amount of X mana and large mana activate abilities like Mobilization will help agains these type of decks. Consider recovery plans, add extra mana stones, and dont overextend your landbase. Keeping at least one or two lands in hand tend to help and consider Darksteel Citadel + Flagstones of Trokair in your landbase.
Card Options
I will review several of the cards that I feel would be worth consideration in a rebel deck. I will list the cards that I currently run and several cards that I have run before or put consideration into running for the benefit of any reader who is looking to make modifications to my list. Cards that appear in my own decklist should be bolded, that is assuming everything is up to date in this section. I also opted to do a section that involved all of the rebels and changelings rather than putting them in their appropriate sections because not all rebels are creatures.
---REBELS---
Amrou Scout two mana rebels who can search for rebels are mostly always worth running. Most of the rebel package caps out at the three mana mark so these guys can tutor for a large portion of the rebels that are worth running. The p/t and most other features of this particular rebel are mostly unimpressive. Having two power means it can attempt to stack up on a larger creature slightly easier and it can be Skullclamped for quick value. Beyond that, there isn't much to say about this particular rebel. Its generally not my go to 2 drop but having it in the deck adds consistency for digging my way out of being tucked.
Amrou Seekers evasive beater style of rebel. Generally speaking, this style of rebel is designed more for a sword beat down style of build. Even then though, Zealot il-Vec's evasion tends to be superior for equipment delivery builds. Amrou Seekers is still nice for some redundancy but its evasion can be very dependant on your opponents and the board state.
Aven Riftwatcher this rebel has a variety of uses. We dont have a lot of air defense so it can serve as a decent chump blocker as well as a source of lifegain. He can also be used in an equipment build as an evasive creature. The lifegain he gives is nice for building a buffer against decks that directly attack life totals. The fact that he vanishes isn't that big of a deal overall but the more pressure type decks you see in your meta the more useful he will be.
Avian Changeling its a mostly unimpressive changeling that has flying. If you are really hurting for flying blockers though, I would personally reccomend looking at Aven Riftwatcher, Thermal Glider, and Nightwind Glider all to be included before going as far as consider this changeling.
Ballista Squad this guy acts primarily as a pillowfort effect. The problem for me is that its incredibly slow to be useable and is very mana inefficient. We have better ways of staving off attacks coming our way. As far as utilizing it as support for attacking out, I think that is rather ineffective as it leaves us potentially tapped down as we pass. Personally, I just dont see a lot of merit in running this guy. Our rebel package is already really good at defending us, he is slow, and he is mana inefficient.
Blade of the Sixth Pride it has a somewhat high power for its mana. It could potentially be utilized in an equipment build but I dont think its a very good creature in general. It could be an alright target to grab when being attacked but x/3's on the ground are not very common in EDH so I would say hes probably just not going to be that effective.
Changeling Hero by default, I utilize this rebel to attempt to push Lin Sivvi through wrath effects. It takes a lot less time setting up if Lin Sivvi stays in play and so while I will drop the rest of my board, I generally dont loose much momentum at all if I can keep my commander in play. The abilities of the creature themselves are ok and I have used him to gain life in the past or attempt to trade with an attacker by blocking with him and or stacking blocks against something. Take note thought that the Champion portion of his ability will not work if you have Torpor Orb in play which I also run in this build.
Changeling Sentinel his power and toughness are relatively uninteresting overall and vigilance on a small creature generally doesn't matter. The big question with him is how much you value the changeling ability. If you want to run some tribal cards, the changelings can be somewhat useful in relation to them.
Children of Korlis this creature can be used in a lot of different ways in addition to just making it hard to swarm at us for larger portions of damage. What I really like about the children though is that I can use them to recover from things like Sorrin Markov, Debt to the Deathless, Magister's Sphinx, Exanguinate and such. I also run Phyrexian Processor in my build which the children can recover from whatever life we dump into it as well as GAIN life if you sacrifice the children, tuck the children, and tutor them again. This can be expensive to do but if you set them up ahead of time by tutoring for them at the end of your opponents turn before using them it just adds 4 mana to the cost of the processor to essentially double your life total. They are a nice tool to have access to as if someone randomly swings at you for 20 or something you can just sort of dismiss it afterwards assuming its not commander damage. Players hitting you for sizable life swings can actually turn into net life gain with this guy.
Cho-Arrim Bruiser he sort of fits the equipment build strategy. Considering he can tap down two targets it can open an opponent up for attacks. Add swords and protections to the mix and you can strategically get sword triggers through. In general though, he lacks evasion, size, and is expensive to cast. I was not overly impressed with him in my testing.
Cho-Manno, Revolutionary he prevents damage to himself which is sort of cool but it really feels like he should have been indestructible before they started using it. He still gets wrathed away and in general, if someone is attacking me with something on the ground of decent size, I am more likely to go and get Defiant Vanguard to make it go away. I just found that the number of situations that he fit what I was looking for was too narrow. Any sort of evasion gets past him and he gets swept with the rest of rebels in a wrath. He just.... sort of needed something more to make him better in my mind.
Crib Swap sadly, rebels were all errata-ed to get "rebel permanents." This means that we can tuck this card with Lin Sivvi but we cannot tutor it out with our rebel package. It is disappointing as it would have been an amazing piece of removal for rebels to have gained. Alas, my pipe dream will have to continue.
Defiant Falcon two mana tutoring rebels are great as most of the rebel package fits in the 3 or less mana range. This means that the two mana rebel tutors can fetch most of the other utility from the deck and can tutor for Lin Sivvi and have a somewhat reasonable cost still in their tutors. Defiant Falcon tends to be one of my go to 2 drop tutor rebels due to having flying in case of needing a blocker in a pinch. It is also the right size for skullclamp to run over for some value which is handy.
Defiant Vanguard having this guy in your deck generally means people will reconsider randomly attacking you with titans and such. Being able to go and get a creature that will always trade with attackers is really handy. I ran it with Shield Dancer for a long time but then realized that they had a very similar role but Defiant Vanguard did not require additional mana to utilize. Shield Dancer can theoretically be better in play over time due to the fact that it lives through its encounters but generally people just dont send random attackers on the ground at us due to our toolbox of tricks in the first place. In the end, I found Defiant Vanguard to have the effect I needed more often and the fact that he is a rebel tutor as well helps me out of random tuck incidents.
Errant Doomsayers generally speaking, this is a very situational Whipcorder. While I like the fact that it doesn't require mana to activate, I dislike how situational its tap is. I also dont know how many little creatures I really care if they are tapped or untapped but it could help in an equipment deck to just get past the chump blockers and such. Generally for me, the ability is too narrow.
Fresh Volunteers vanilla bear rebel, no thank you. It just gives me zero utility and its not a useful sized creature.
Jhovall Queen the tank of the rebels. She is the largest rebel that has been printed thus far. Her size as a 4/7 is a little awkward but its also the perfect size to put a sword on and wreck some face. She has vigilance and enough toughness to chump a titan sized creature without any buffs on either. I like her a lot but I can never seem to find a build that ever really wants to tutor for her over other options. She has some cool points and is the biggest tank the rebels have access to. With a sword, a 6/9 vigilant creature with protections can definately do some damage given some time. I could see her working well with a mass land destruction style of equipment build.
Jhovall Rider its expensive and has a mostly unimpressive p/t. It does have trample which might help it connect but sadly its just too small of a body to do much with.
Knight of the Holy Nimbus its funny and it could be somewhat political but in general, multiple opponents who can each pay to disable his regeneration is not so great. He was really cool back when he was in standard but he just isn't going to fly in multiplayer EDH generally speaking.
Lawbringer these guys pack a ton of power. Generally speaking, in a multiplayer game of EDH, someone is usually in one of the two colors of the bringers. These guys can be useful in exiling commanders and creatures. They can also pick off other creatures with access to Distorting Lens which I use primarily for these guys.
Lightbringer these guys pack a ton of power. Generally speaking, in a multiplayer game of EDH, someone is usually in one of the two colors of the bringers. These guys can be useful in exiling commanders and creatures. They can also pick off other creatures with access to Distorting Lens which I use primarily for these guys.
Mirror Entity this is my primary go to wincon for making a large swarm of lethal damage on someone. Be careful in utilizing it too early as it often means that you will get wrathed and not accomplish enough with him. I tend to prefer to spawn a large wave of tokens at instant speed and follow it up with entity on my turn making that large swarm of creatures into very very large beaters. Tutoring him into play ahead of time so you can get a larger buff is often sort of a bad move because it opens him up to spot removal before you can make your attack. Also watch out for split second shenanigans when playing this guy. I often try to tutor for him and spend his ability before passing priority to avoid awkward situations with split second.
Nightwind Glider if you need additional protection in the air you can consider the gliders. Generally speaking though, their protections are quite minor. Lightbringer and Lawbringer bring enough hate to justify being narrow in use but I feel like the gliders dont quite bring enough power really. They can be alright against some decks like Kaalia but ideally you started off by using Bound in Silence on her slowing her deck to a slow crawl anyways. They can be alright for an equipment based deck as evasive beaters.
Outrider en-Kor generally speaking about the only use for him is to attempt the rebel based infinite life combo. It is executed by utilizing this guy with Task Force to make Task Force into an infinite toughness creature and then sacrificing him to an effect like Miren, the Moaning Well. Outside of attempting something like that, I wouldnt run this guy or task force.
Pious Warrior he is an amusing chump blocker for his lifegain but in general I would prefer to have Aven Riftwatcher due to the evasion. It is also hard for Pious Warrior to really soak up more than 6 damage on average so the lifegain is probably very similar but he lacks evasion.
Ramosian Captain I use this rebel to increase my overall tutoring rebel count. If someone tucks Lin Sivvi, you need adequate tutoring rebels to be able to recover from it. Generally speaking, I dont really tutor for this rebel but I suppose a 2/2 first strike could randomly be useful in some situations. I only run one rebel that costs 4 mana so generally speaking its a waste of mana to use this rebel tutor over another rebel tutor given the option.
Ramosian Commander I cap my rebels in my list at 5 mana and only run one at 5 mana and one at 4 mana so really spending more mana to rebel tutor is generally a waste. I tend to utilize Lin Sivvi for most of my tutoring anyways so this guy is just more expensive and more expensive to use his abilities for no real good reason. Due to that, I keep my tutoring rebels on the cheap side.
Ramosian Lieutenant cant ever have enough 2 mana tutoring rebels. Its sort of useful that he can equip skullclamp and not die but in general, I dont really tutor for this one in specific all that much. Its good to have redundancy though to keep out of being tucked.
Ramosian Revivalist with lin sivvi's ability to tuck rebels and most of the rebels being cheap anyways, this guy is really just not that useful. If it had a lower mana cost / lower mana targets I might consider it but paying 6 mana is the same for me as tucking and then tutoring most of my rebel package anyways. Generally, I dont like over extending my board position into a wrath unless there is a reason to do so.
Ramosian Sergeant One of the two one drop rebels in the deck. Its really handy having some cheap targets in case I have to mostly tap out for other things in my turn as it means I can still tutor into useful things for Lin Sivvi. It cant get plenty of my rebels but its really cheap to get into play and that makes it useful. Its also useful when trying to multiply as fast as possible as its got the cheapest rebel tutoring outside of Lin Sivvi herself.
Ramosian Sky Marshal evasion plus decent size are nice. Its rebel tutor though is horrifyingly expensive though. If you have a lot of trouble with getting tucked it might be worth considering just because its not bad as a 3/3 flyer that can carry swords and such but in general, its kinda overcosted and its search is extremely expensive.
Rappelling Scouts good defensive blocker. It can go protection from colors making it an excelent chump blocker and it has naturally relative high defense. It flies too so its one of my go to flying defense options to just try to make things go elsewhere.
Reveille Squad its an amusing defensive option. It could be fun in a sword / aggro style of build but generally I feel like I am over-extending into wrath territory with the kind of situations he could be useful in. I could see him being useful in an aggro vs aggro sort of environment though.
Riftmarked Knight its abilities just aren't really relevant. I would just run the glider instead and be happy as flanking doesn't matter and you wont ever want to suspend him.
Saltfield Recluse its just not that relevant 95% of the time. Its ability doesn't scale at all to make it work for EDH. It looks more designed for limited use.
Samite Censer-Bearer it seems designed to help assist against Pyroclasm effects. I just dont see it being relivant in EDH.
Shield Dancer I really like the abilities it has but I found it too similar to Defiant Vanguard in nature plus there was an issue that the Shield Dancer required additional mana after tutoring for it so it wasnt really that easy to use. On top of that, if something had trample, it would sort of push over the Shield Dancer without dying. I just found that Defiant Vanguard fit the needs of what I was trying to do more often. I really only needed to have one of them in my deck as well to deter attackers.
Shields of Velis Vel again, I can only tutor for "rebel permanents" with my rebel tutors. There aren't that many non rebels in here and not a lot of specific tribal buffs in here either. This sort of effect could possibly have some synergy with Coat of Arms as making my own creatures all creature types would make them massive but without the ability to tutor for this sort of thing with the rebel tutor it just doesn't have enough synergy with the deck. Plus I just run too little that matters as far as being tribal in play.
Steadfast Guard vigilance on a small creature just doesn't matter enough. Vigilant bears are not really useful.
Sword Dancer he has potential to act as an attack deterrent as you could lower creature's power and then dog pile it but in general I think the ability costs too much mana and doesn't do enough. I sort of lump this guy in with Ballista Squad as being mana inefficient and too situational.
Task Force as I mentioned with Outrider en-Kor, its a combo card to be used with Miren, the Moaning Well type of effects for infinite lifegain. I dont really suggest using this though as all of the cards involved are rather bad cards on their own. In addition, gaining infinite life isn't as good as it might sound due to combo and voltron options of killing players in this format.
Thermal Glider if you need additional protection in the air you can consider the gliders. Generally speaking though, their protections are quite minor. Lightbringer and Lawbringer bring enough hate to justify being narrow in use but I feel like the gliders dont quite bring enough power really. They can be alright against some decks like Kaalia but ideally you started off by using Bound in Silence on her slowing her deck to a slow crawl anyways. They can be alright for an equipment based deck as evasive beaters.
Trenching Steed its a bad creature. I cant really say a lot more than that considering its not even an elephant for 4 mana.
Whipcorder I like the versatility of this guy as we can use him to poke holes in opponents defenses or defend ourselves with him. It can work well in a pillow fort situation to just take out a blocker and allow someone else to swing in and hit people. I find this useful for sniping out planeswalkers on occasion as well as people tend to defend them with a few creatures.
Zealot il-Vec he is great at delivering hits with swords and his damage poke to creatures can be useful when paired with deathtouch. There are a few utility guys who die to one damage pokes as well. I just really wish he could have redirected his damage rather than doing a single damage regardless of power as it really handicaps him. Great in a sword build though for getting in there.
---CREATURES---
~~~~~One Mana~~~~~
Mother of Runes possible protection option as well as part of a Ranger of Eos build. I like it in wrath light metas, spot removal heavy mentas, or in decks that plan on screwing with lands.
Planar Guide possible protection from wraths and a Ranger of Eos target. He plays well with the draw / go style of build but I generally dont like showing my tricks before I have to so opponents knowing he is there has its pros and cons I guess...
Serra Ascendant for the more aggressive builds as well as those looking to run sword builds its a nice and cheap beater. It fits into a Ranger of Eos toolbox nicely and beats in very well especially in a mass LD build.
Weathered Wayfarer He searches for any land which is really useful as we have some solid utility lands as targets. If you want, you can run some of the cycle lands as well to use him as card draw assuming thats something you think you would use. Ranger of Eos is also a decent card to run assuming you have enough one drops that you would search for. Inflating your hand with lands works well with cards like Scroll Rack too as you can convert lands into cards drawn. He is one of white's few value generators and considering how many good utility lands continue to be printed, I dont see him getting worse anytime soon.
~~~~~Two Mana~~~~~
Knight of the White Orchid the body is mostly irrelevant but it does ramp a land at the cost of one mana considering he brings the land into play untapped. I normally really like this guy in white decks that lack green but generally speaking you have to drop him on turn three which is when I want to be hitting Lin Sivvi so too often I found myself casting him on turn 4 and later which hurt his performance in my eyes.
Stoneforge Mystic solid creature for running equipment. I ran it for a long time but ended up with just too few equipment to keep him in the list anymore. He is rather standard to see in EDH decks and does some serious work. Torpor Orb in my build again does interfere with him on occasion though.
~~~~~Three Mana~~~~~
Aven Mindcensor he can act like a counterspell to opponent's tutor effects. He is cheap to cast and has flash so he sort of works with what the deck is already trying to do. Beyond usually screwing with a counterspell, he often just deters tutoring for a few turns until he gets answered. The big question is how long you can keep him in play. This list as I run it doesn't run a lot of protection for him or reanimation for him either. He can be useful against tutor happy opponents but he also usually dies quite fast against them. He plays better against combo generally speaking.
Burnished Hart it ramps two lands into play. The sort of awkward part of it though is that Lin Sivvi is what I want to do at 3 mana and so that puts me on playing this on turn four and poping it on turn 5 or pushing lin sivvi back. This sort of eats up two turns too before seeing the results so in general, I guess it just doesn't quite feel like it fits what this deck wants to do.
Mentor of the Meek rebels are all mostly small creatures. He functions nicely to allow us to draw off of them coming in. He doesn't function under Torpor Orb which I also run but there are few enough conflicts that I run both of them in the deck together. He is fairly cheap and my rebels are generally cheap enough that I can usually draw 1-2 cards in a turn with him in play.
Scarecrone it has a few interesting uses in this deck due to some of the changeling options we run. It can be used to generate some small draw or if you run enough artifact creatures, serve as a re-animator effect.
Stonecloaker instant speed graveyard hate that is repeatable. I dont like taking out all graveyards necessarily since I can tuck rebels and have Emeria, the Sky Ruin in the deck. It can also be useful for recovering Lin Sivvi in a pinch (sometimes she is tapped or you dont have 5 mana up).
~~~~~Four Mana~~~~~
Heliod, God of the Sun the vigilance could potentially be useful in an equipment or stax based build. He will probably end up being animated in a rebel build due to the amount of creatures we tend to put into play. The cost per token is a bit high though so its hard to really run away with him but if you are looking for more token spawning effects he is something to consider I suppose.
Hokori, Dust Drinker he plays the stax game well. Utilize him with some equipment and mana stones and just stax it up. He has good synergy with things like Kismet to keep people from recovering too quickly.
Kor Cartographer its ramp but its slow and it doesn't have a lot of value behind it. Torpor Orb also hurts it and we run that. In general I would rather the ramp that I run be able to be used immediately and not eat up entire turns if possible. I still run Solemn Simulacrum but that's also because of his additional value he brings.
Ranger of Eos hes a potential add but it really comes down to how many targets you run for him. He can generate some value for us though which is hard to do in mono white but I think it really comes down to what one drops you run that you would want to tutor for and how many of them you run.
Solemn Simulacrum just ramp value creature. He is sort of slow to drop and eats up the turn if dropped on curve but its still nice value that white doesnt have a ton of access to.
~~~~~Five Mana~~~~~
Karmic Guide you probably need to be running a LOT more creatures that aren't rebels to really make it relevant. I tried it for a while but with Lin sivvi's ability to tuck rebels it just seemed lackluster wayyyyyy too often.
Stonehewer Giant solid creature for an equipment heavy build. I would make sure to have a decent sized equipment toolbox though to run him. He can generate continued value and the equipment he gets can generate further value. You need to run several equipment though to make him worth including though.
~~~~~Six Mana~~~~~
Crovax, Ascendant Hero he can help against random utility and opposing token decks. His ability to bounce back to hand is really handy and if he gets stolen from deck it doesn't hurt us which is nice. I like him as an anthem for an aggro style of build due to his low backfire capability. His effect is much less potent than Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite's but her backfire capability is quite monstrous for us.
Duplicant if you have means to abuse creatures then I think hes a decent effect, I just dont have ways to abuse him in here though and I cant really tutor for or recur him that nicely either. I also run Torpor Orb which doesn't mesh well with it and he costs 6 mana at sorcery speed which just doesn't feel good.
Felidar Sovereign this feels like sort of a low blow to run but if you are ok with combo based things its I guess acceptable. The best way to run this guy is with flash so Scout's Warning / Winding Canyons / Vedalken Orrery all help jump him in at the last second for a potential surprise victory. I think its sort of lame but whatever floats your boat I guess.
Sun Titan I guess I just didn't feel like I really had enough targets I really wanted to rez with him. Its possible to use him but I almost feel like I need to run fetchlands in order for him to have enough value to rez with. I looked at my list and I do have like 15 or so targets for him but it just hasn't been enough. When I would cast him there would be like a single target and then there would be like no other opportunity to generate value with him. I also dont like tapping down 6 mana on my turn if I can help it.
Yosei, the Morning Star it is possible to establish a Yosei lock to lock someone out of the game by utilizing Yosei with some sort of rez engine. (Emeria, the Sky Ruin + Sac outlet) (Adarkar Valkyrie + Sac Outlet) (Nim Deathmantle + Sac Outlet) are the ones that come to mind offhand. Of them, Nim Deathmantle has the capability of locking out several players on its own based on how much mana you have available so I would say its the strongest option of them but Emeria, the Sky Ruin being a land is fairly strong as well. Overall, I dont see much synergy with the deck but its an option if you were looking to include some combos.
~~~~~Seven Mana~~~~~
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite a great anthem and great wincon. The biggest issue I have with her is when people steal her from us and or make a ton of clones of her everywhere.
~~~~~Crazy Mana~~~~~
Avacyn, Angel of Hope its a strong effect, but honestly its not that hard to deal with her and I think the likelihood of her being stolen from your deck, cloned off you, or stolen off of you after casting it are something like..... 80% stronger than the chance of you drawing it and it working for you. Some people love her but I just haven't ever been impressed by what she has done. Playing her out is sort of like asking to be answered next and she really isn't that hard to deal with.
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth he draws cards!!!!!!! Also, rebels can deal with him relatively easily if stolen as we have Whipcorder, Bound in Silence, and in a pinch Defiant Vanguard not to mention just the random instant speed answers the deck runs. His annihilate and massive size makes him a nice backup plan. I also dont really mind if my graveyard get shuffled in as most of what I want my graveyard for is the ability to put it back in my deck.
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre he has a vindicate trigger on casting and is relatively hard to kill due to being indestructible. He is a nice plan B style of beater and the deck itself can deal with him being stolen and cloned rather effectively due to Whipcorder and Bound in Silence not to mention just the exile and tuck based removal that we pack.
Blightsteel Colossus he is big, mean, and he can absolutely destroy some people. We can also generally defend ourselves from him if he gets stolen. He is an option for alternate wincons if you want to run him. In general though, I feel like Ulamog accomplishes more though since he has an on cast ability trigger and essentially any blockers will force Blightsteel into taking two+ turns to kill someone. I think that annihilate 4 plus having 10+ power is more effective than infect + trample.
---ARTIFACT---
~~~~~Zero Mana~~~~~
Everflowing Chalice I like this stone as a varying cost / effect mana stone. I can drop it at 2 mana and use it to be more explosive into my early game or I can wait until later and drop it at 6 or more mana as sort of a Gilded Lotus style of stone. The best part is that it comes in untapped so it can be used immediately and so it keeps my rebel tutors still available. Its easy for this to generate some seriously large amounts of mana later on which is nice and it has a varying level of use depending on what you need it to be.
Mana Crypt it is amazing ramp, but Lin Sivvi costs 1WW so it really doesn't ramp well into her. On top of that, this deck wins in a long drawn out game so taking 1.5 dmg a turn (on average) will sort of add up quickly over the course of a long game. I tend to focus on using this more in a deck that I am trying to run out as a fast deck. In slow drawn out games, it can do a lot of damage to you especially if you aren't lucky about its randomness. I have taken damage for like 8 straight turns before using this in my Thrun deck and using it in a slower designed deck seems sort of problematic.
Orochi Hatchery it can be used as a large token spawner that can be repeatedly activated for dudes. It is a little clunky though in the fact that you generally tend to need to drop crazy mana into it for a turn and then like 2-3 turns later you become a problem for the board. I do however like it as a card that could be run after being wrathed off the board as your first thing back in play. I tend to try to drop it at 3+ counters on it and I like being able to activate it the same turn I drop it. Its not cheap to work with but has potential for CRAZY token generation.
~~~~~One Mana~~~~~
Basilisk Collar deathtouch can be used to keep attackers away from turning sideways in your general direction. Offensively speaking, it can be paired with Zealot il-Vec for a removal stick in an equipment build.
Expedition Map utility lands are solid. If you want, you can build around one in specific and add this to fetch it. Or, if you just like having access to fun toys its still solid.
Explorer's Scope it can be amusing with topdeck manipulation but overall, I find it a little underwhelming.
Meekstone its sort of a stax style of pillowfort effect. The downside to it is that it keeps opponents from attacking each other as well. It can be combined with Whipcorder to just lock up creatures though so they cant just defend themselves with fatties. The hard part with this effect is if you try using it with equipment, most equipment will buff the rebels into getting stuck tapped so you will probably have to shift the equipment around and alternate untapping.
Pithing Needle its a decent card if you encounter a lot of utility commanders. Generally speaking, its hard to consistantly draw it in this style of deck and its an incredibly meta dependent style of card. If you constantly have issues with a commander like Arcum Dagsson or Captain Sisay though, it can be worth running.
Relic of Progenitus its solid grave hate. It hits our own graveyard though too so you generally want to tuck rebels before executing it. It can be useful for its tap ability though too as it can keep opponents off of rezing creatures from other graveyards as most players will agree to exile the targeted creature in response to a rez given the option. It cantrips to boot when it pops.
Scrabbling Claws useful for slow rolling grave hate. The tap ability can often be used to cull graveyards or be used in response to an attempt to rez from someone else's graveyard. It can also pop to hit a target cards plus draw a card which is nice. Its got a smaller effect than Relic but it doesn't hit our own graveyard and tends to slow roll just as nicely. It sort of comes down somewhat to how much you value your own graveyard as to how useful it can be in comparison to Relic of Progenitus.
Sensei's Divining Top topdeck manipulation is really prime in a deck where you assume you will search and shuffle about once a turn. This means that every turn, you get access to the best of three cards as your draw. Then you get to ship out the extra cards and send them off. You really have to watch out on using the top's ability to draw a card though as it can be easy to accidentally ship it off if you dont pay attention. This is a great card at triggering Miracle cards too due to being able to stack them as you want and draw them when you need them. This is one of the best tools you have at just getting quality draws. Unfortunately, we dont have a lot of ways to go get it. Its well worth burning an Enlightened Tutor to get though as it pays off in gold over time.
Skullclamp depending on your setup, this can draw a lot of cards in one shot. Its nice to build into using this and just burn off spare rebels with this. It works really really well with the lawbringer / lightbringer as well. It can be hard to really run away with this card though as its a pain to tutor and tuck the rebels so I will sometimes draw like 2-4 cards and just set it up on a rebel that will live through its equip. Its a good card in here, but unfortunately we dont have a ton of disposable creatures that we want to just die on us in here.
Sol Ring solid ramp and its cheap. There isn't much to say about it other than its a solid staple. It taps for more mana than it costs to drop with zero downsides.
Wayfarer's Bauble land ramp can be robust assuming your meta doesn't run a lot of mass land destruction. If you see mass land destruction, you might move this to a mana stone instead. In general though, I would rather have lands in play than a mana stone though as stones tend to get blown up.
~~~~~Two Mana~~~~~
Defense Grid its amusing to screw with opponents since most of what we do on opponents turns is rebel tutoring which this does not effect. It can be useful to keep people off your back but it also screws with us a little and stops opponents from stopping each other at instant speed somewhat. It has pros and cons though and if you play against a lot of draw / go opposition it could be worth considering.
Distorting Lens this thing has a TON of hidden uses that arent always easy to see offhand. The most obvious use for this card is to enable Lawbringer and Lightbringer. Using the lens, we can nuke any colored creature which is super handy. Ouside of that, we can poke holes in protections, we can unequip swords by making the swords themselves a color that they protect against, and we can just randomly screw with things lol. Its been more impressive so far than I had originally expected but protection from white is actually a problematic thing so its handy that this deals with it so well by just making the thing that gives the protection into a color it protects against.
Illusionist's Bracers it can be used to try to swarm with rebels in play. I generally speaking dont play that type of deck where I want to put as many rebels in play as fast as I can though so I dont run this but its an option if you want.
Leonin Sun Standard its an option for playing anthem effects. Its going to be half as productive as Mirror Entity but its still a potentially powerful effect.
Lightning Greaves it can be used for haste to use rebels sooner. Generally speaking, this really only matters when playing Lin Sivvi out but its also difficult to play her out and have much mana to use for rebels in the same shot. I generally dont worry about this.
Mask of Memory its an excellent means to generate card advantage. You can ditch rebels to the discard and shuffle them back into the deck later or just get rid of whatever you dont need at the time. I tend to find the card advantage from this to be better than Sword of Fire and Ice and its much cheaper to drop and equip in one shot. The downside is that you need to run some evasive rebels and still need to connect. I cut it myself because too many people in my meta run maze effects so I find it difficult to lightly run an equipment package in this deck and connect through. Too many people were willing to maze a 1/1 bird to keep me off of drawing two cards.
Mind Stone generally speaking, I try to get my mana stones in this deck to tap for more than one mana. This stone has an advantage though that it can be cycled off for a card later if needed. Colorless mana doesn't really hurt much and ramping at 2 mana works well as it doesn't put me off my curve.
Scroll Rack we can push rebels back into the deck, we can set up miracles, and we can bloat our hands up full of lands with things like Land Tax and turn them into nonland cards with this. Scroll Rack is a card of many hats but its here to help ship our hand off and make it better. With a high number of shuffle effects we can ship out anything we dont like that is in our hand and draw into something else. Its a very useful card as it sort of selectively wheels your hand however you want. I actually consider it to be one of the better hand fixing / drawing cards in the deck. If you see this in an opening hand with mana you probably dont need to mulligan at all as you can just ship them off with the rack before shuffling.
Surveyor's Scope I am looking to test this new ramp card and see how it goes. It has some interesting potential and it drops in before our commander drops which is nice. I am not really certain yet as to what to expect from it but it looks interesting.
Torpor Orb it screws with ETB effects. We run a lot of creatures that dont really have ETB effects so its a nice way to screw with opponents. It does screw with the Changeling Hero which is probably one of the more annoying ones that it screws with since he is part of our toolbox. In general though, it screws with opponents a lot more than it does with us though.
Tsabo's Web this can be a great way to screw with opponents utility lands and open up equipment connecting. Its nice as well that it replaces itself in hand as well. You really dont need to build around this much but I wouldn't push too hard on the utility tap lands if you run it.
Umezawa's Jitte it can be used for some alright value generation in an equipment build. Generally speaking though, since we are not playing a voltron deck it is hard to really utilize for much. The -/- ability is probably going to be as good as you can get with it in here. Its really not well suited for this deck even if going an equipment package because pumping an evasive rebel just isn't the same as pumping a voltron commander. Lifegain in commander, is mostly under whelming and with the pump less effective, it really limits how productive the card can be in a rebels build. You can toy with it, but I wouldn't go out and buy / trade into one to test it in a rebels build.
Winter Orb it can be used in a stax style of build where you hate on opponents resources. Rebels tend to be cheap to tutor and have good utility so you could push for mana stone ramp and hate on lands while trying to connect in with equipment and in general setting up stax tactics.
~~~~~Three Mana~~~~~
Crawlspace because it only applies to attacking you, this can be utilized to suppress swarm decks from going all out on you. It is a very specific effect though so I would wait to be having problems with swarm before considering this as its sort of a do nothing style of card against everyone else. It can also be easily removed before attacking you so watch out from depending on this sticking to defend you. It is a pillowfort style of card and can be removed if someone is determined to hit you.
Crucible of Worlds if you have troubles sticking utility lands, you want to use fetchlands, or you play against mass land destruction. In general, I dont really find myself to be relying on any one land in this deck though so without using fetchlands, it feels a little underwhelming to include in here.
Crystal Ball topdeck manipulation is fantastic in this deck because drawing more cards is hard to do and we tend to shuffle a lot. This means we can try to dig into the cards you want or need for your turn by having access to the ball. I find the ball to be sort of superior to some other topdeck manipulators in decks that can't shuffle a lot but even with our high shuffle effects, it can make a nice addition as sort of a less powerful Sensei's Divining Top effect.
Darksteel Ingot indestructible, it ramps slightly, and it generally doesn't get swept. Its about as good as ramping a land with some pros and cons to it. I like it as we can use it to break through something like a contamination lock. In general though, its a little over costed for what it does here but it doesn't get swept so that's handy.
Darksteel Plate it can help to stick Lin Sivvi through a lot of wrath effects without needing to try to protect her with the Changeling Hero. It is also very handy for just having a really solid blocker on hand. Since the deck already has access to Changeling Hero though, I dont think this is really a necessity but it can be nice to toy with.
Diviner's Wand since changelings are wizards, we can get the auto equip to work for us with this card. Paying 4 mana per card is not cheap but white has cruddy access to draw and this deck does push hard on drawing.
Druidic Satchel none of the abilities it can hit are necessarily bad and its reveal ability can be used to determine if you want to tap a rebel on your turn before drawing to push off that draw into something else. The land into play is obviously the objective most of the time but tokens and life are not really bad.
Ensnaring Bridge against opposing aggro and voltron decks this can work nicely. Our draw is really bad but its rare that we are trying to swing with really large creatures. The biggest downside is that it might encourage you to dump your hand and it doesn't keep opponents from taking and dealing damage to each other. Its a political pillowfort card though.
Oblivion Stone solid sweeper that we can control as we need it. The deck is very defensive as well so we can potentially drop this and defend a few turns before using it. I dont like having to blow up my stuff but its possible to fate counter or even get Changeling Hero leading into doing this. Being an artifact means there are a few ways possible to recover it too which can be useful on occasion.
Quietus Spike this little bugger can do some serious work with some of the evasive rebels. The biggest problem is that its really a pain to drop and equip in one shot as its not cheap to do either. It also sort of falls off on how hard it hits people making it still difficult to close out a game with it. It works well on Zealot il-Vec though as he can easily deliver hits one damage pings can be very potent with deathtouch.
Rings of Brighthearth it works with Lin Sivvi to get two activations out of her but honestly, I would be more interested in using this with fetchlands to ramp. Its sort of an awkward artifact though in general though. I dont tend to try to swarm with rebels either so I just didn't find myself needing rebels two at a time usually. It depends on what you want to do though and how much value you can generate from it. As far as using it to multiply rebels though, I found it underwhelming.
Sculpting Steel it can be a generally speaking solid card or it can be very underwhelming. It depends on how many good artifact targets you see. I generally like to run it in a list thats sort of artifact heavy. Cloning mana stones can be a nice move and a good way to pick up on other people's good ramp / value generators.
Spear of Heliod its an anthem effect and a pillowfort effect in one. Generally speaking, the pump is too small and the utility effect on it is rather situational and we can tend to fight off the sort of creatures that we would care about that it can hit.
Staff of Domination it can do a lot of handy things as mana dumps. Its a nice effect to keep up as options too. Most of the things it can do we sort of can do as well but the option for card draw is nice. I often dont like over extending the rebels in play if I dont have to so it seems like a nice way to fort up and just draw cards. Its a card that you ideally want to be on a big mana strategy to run.
Sunstone its a pillowfort effect that you can use to try to fend off swarm style of decks. Unfortunately, once again it is a type of permanent that swarm decks dont tend to have an issue answering.
Sword of Feast and Famine its nice because it can pay for itself and its equip. This means less time with the pants down after doing the cast + equip. The evasions and protections are probably one of the better ones too of the swords. It works well to be moved to another rebel to defend with.
Sword of Fire and Ice card advantage is hard to come by in mono white. It gives some spot removal and draw so its handy to have. Its sort of a pain to drop and equip a sword in one shot though.
Sword of Light and Shadow you probably want some fairly powerful non rebel creatures in the deck to make this worthwhile since we can always tuck and re-tutor the rebels. Reanimating rebels is very underwhelming.
Sword of War and Peace it can pack some punch and since this inst a voltron deck, its a useful card for an equipment package to carry. Its also nice that it punishes the greedy hand players but its protections are kind of terrible since nobody really wants to swords to plowshares a rebel anyways.
Thousand-Year Elixir the ability to tap immediately to rebel tutor is sort of handy. I am often trying to keep Lin Sivvi in play though so if she dies and has to be recast it can be a pain to have extra mana to tutor for much. The untap ability is alright but incredibly costly to pay to tutor, pay to untap, then pay to tutor again. I like it the most with the Lawbringer and Lightbringer to tap exile on the spot. Its also very funny to surprise someone with a Whipcorder that can be used twice in one shot. In general, I found that people tended to blow it up on sight though so I really never got to use it.
~~~~~Four Mana~~~~~
Erratic Portal it can be used to harass opponents creatures or used to recover Lin Sivvi to hand in case of an emergency. Its nice due to the low mana to utilize it. It can be very tricky to play around keeping 2 extra mana up all the time as an opponent as you can use this at the end of opponents turns and on your turn as well to force them to pay two more at a time.
Gemstone Array it can be used to store mana for turns where you need a large portion of mana. Generally speaking, you wont use all of your mana every turn so this is useful to stockpile mana. Its more useful in the mid to late game though than the early game since it doesn't actually ramp really on its own.
Goblin Charbelcher spin the wheel of randomness and see how hard you hit lol. This can be very productive in conjunction with Land Tax or Endless Horizons which can strip large portions of your landbase out. Its sort of a silly random thing but it can be used to dispatch creatures or shoot for direct damage to the face. I would really only use it if you have plans to extract large portions of your landbase though and even then, its a little sketchy. Its super amusing though if you randomly shoot it at someone's face and hit a large clump of no lands.
Helm of Possession super fun creature theft. Sadly, it really works the best with additional sac outlets. It can be used to harass opponents creatures though which is fun but without a follow up sac outlet I just didn't find it as useful.
Jester's Cap it can hate on combo players by dismantling pieces of their combo while still in their deck. Generally you only need to take one pice out of each combo to disable a combo so try to find the key piece or pieces to dismantle with this.
Phyrexian Processor it makes some big tokens to beat face with. Ideally utilize Children of Korlis with this card to recover any life you pay into it or possibly gain life by cycling the children back around a second time. The tokens are big and smashy like.
Slate of Ancestry it allows you to cycle your hand somewhat nicely. It can work just fine even with just 3+ guys in play as often your hand gets a bit stagnant so its a nice card especially with the fact that this deck tends to have several creatures in play quite often. Its sort of expensive to drop and use in one shot but its how I generally suggest trying to use it as slow rolling it doesn't tend to pan out nearly as well.
Smokestack can be utilized in a stax style of build. Its very harsh if you can manage to ratchet it up to more than one counters while stabilizing but its also very difficult to do.
Sword of the Paruns it can act as an anthem effect for going on the offensive while still being an equipment which is very rare. It makes it easier to tutor for and still its power buff is fairly strong considering most anthems only give one point of power or toughness.
Teferi's Puzzle Box it works to turn land fetches like Land Tax into card draw and it also ships off rebels and just cycles hands quickly. It can be useful for disrupting combo decks as they can have a hard time setting everything up in their hands in one shot. Its also sort of unfortunate against decks that focus heavily on card draw as every turn they get a chance to bloat their hands up and turn it into a new bigger hand. It does give us a bit of a chance to do the same as we get more access to our big draw effects. It works well with Scroll Rack as well as you can push good cards into your next hand. Playing against things like Consecreated Sphinx though can be EXTREMELY bad though.
Thran Dynamo reasonably costed artifact that taps for almost as much as it costs. It generates TONS of mana considering it costs 4 to drop and taps for 3 more mana. Its great as it has very small net mana loss for the turn you drop it and can immediately be used to tutor for rebels.
Tower of Fortunes its sort of rough on the mana but instant speed drawing 4 cards in one shot for 8 mana is actually not a bad return for the cost when you look at it. Its just soooooo taxing to do this in a turn that I dont like it. Its an option though if you are hurting for draw and are willing to drop some big mana into achieving some draw.
Trading Post it does a lot of sort of useful things for the deck. You can ditch rebels from hand where you can then tuck them or reanimate them into play via Emeria. You can sacrifice rebels to recover draw and ramp effects. It generates goats for chump blocking or mirror entity swinging. Its just..... useful I guess. It can serve as a sac outlet to get Lin Sivvi out of play too potentially if you cant keep 5 mana up for the changeling hero.
Vedalken Orrery being that its sort of a draw / go style of deck, being able to flash cast wraths and creatures has its advantages. It can be very potent to flash in some big plan b style of creatures or even just a big token swarm at end of turn. The hard part of this style of card is that it has some threat attached to it and generally speaking we need somewhat of a setup already to use it. If you get swept for nonlands you will end up loosing a lot but at the same time, using this can help avoid being swept on some key cards too.
Well of Lost Dreams if you try hard, there are some lifegain rebels that can be used. In general though, I dont think there are enough of them that are really solid that including this becomes that good of a move but it could be something to consider.
~~~~~Five Mana~~~~~
Batterskull it starts with a body on it and can be moved to another creature and utilized as a good attacker + defender. I like it in decks that are looking to do more gradual attacking. The size buff is nice, vigilance is nice, and lifelink on it are all useful to have. It is a little expensive to cast and a little expensive to move though so try not to do that more than you have to. I also saw a lot of people blow it up if I ever tapped out which was sort of annoying.
Coat of Arms one of the biggest bang for your buck anthems. If you want to work off of a rebel swarm and run people over that way, this is a good way to pack a lot of power for not much mana. It generally works well with token swarms as well as they share creature types. Mirror Entity works amazingly well too with Coat of Arms as even just making creatures 1/1s will make for a huge power buff since he adds the changeling ability to each of your creatures makeing them absolutely enormous.
Eldrazi Monument this is more of a defensive anthem. It unfortunately sort of brings a lot of hate down on itself considering how defensive it is. You also have to keep bringing out new creatures as it eats a creature a turn. I didn't have very good results with this personally as it hinders multiplying by forcing you to sacrifice a creature every turn and the rebels were already so defensive it just didn't open me up much for attacking out. It brings a fair bit of utility at least but I found it brought more attention down on itself than the power it actually brought.
Gauntlet of Power its an anthem and it allows for crazy mana generation. Most of the big game enders involve spending X mana to make a ton of dudes and swing out. It also helps Mirror Entity make things really crazy big. Anthems can be useful for keeping rebels in the game against things like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite.
Gilded Lotus it costs sort of a lot of mana for a mana stone, but it taps for three mana as well so its a net loss of two mana the turn you drop it. Most of the rebels costs 3 mana as well so it ramps and allows us to still rebel tutor for most things the turn it drops.
Mind's Eye one of the more powerful actual card drawing engines available to mono white. Make sure to milk it for whatever you can. Its sort of unfortunate that it consumes so much mana the turn you drop it as it can easily screw with your ability to rebel tutor for at least a turn. Still, its really powerful and generally gets answered fairly quickly.
Memory Jar its card draw, unfortunately I have a lot of things in this deck and build that need to be played at the right time and so I didnt feel that this sort of temporary wheel could be utilized that well. This isnt the sort of deck that just blowing your hand is a good thing so it felt really odd in general. I would rather just draw a few cards than be forced to try to empty a hand on my turn.
Pariah's Shield it can be utilized with Cho-Manno, Revolutionary as a damage shield. You can really put it on any creature and still get some decent results but Cho-Manno, Revolutionary in specific wont die regardless of what damage is coming in. Unfortunately, this is fairly easy to break through for those trying to be aggressive. It can work alright against the swarm style of decks that we occasionally have issues with and its an equipment so it can be included into a package there if you like.
Ring of Three Wishes it is a cheaper and generally better Planar Portal due to the lower cost to drop and activate. It can be alright if you specifically want certain cards from your deck more consistantly. Its really expensive to drop and use though so generally I prefer to just run more wincons rather than take up turns trying to tutor but the fact that it can retrieve three cards is fairly strong.
Storm Cauldron sort of a stax style of effect. Its hard to play arround but keep a low mana curve and use lots of mana stones and it wont be as rough. It will hurt the heavy ramp big mana decks though but its generally an annoying as hell effect lol.
~~~~~Six Mana~~~~~
Caged Sun its an anthem which helps against Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite type of effects which really hurt us. Most of our finishers involve spawning x tokens or mirror entity for a huge buff so it helps in a lot of ways to close out a game.
Dreamstone Hedron its an expensive mana stone but it also taps for three mana immediately so we can still rebel tutor. Its ability to sacrifice for card draw is also really handy as it can get us some cards flowing if the three mana isn't as important.
Knowledge Pool generally speaking, this card is known for its Teferi lock. However, we dont neccesarily cast a lot of spells and and have sort of bad cards to contribute to the pool so it could be amusing to use to push people off of their game. This would be more of using it to troll opponents though but I can see some good value to be had in doing so.
Myr Incubator with access to sizeable mana, this card can churn out a big stack of tokens in one shot. The biggest problem is that its easy to see coming and we would still need an anthem to make them of decent size. This means that we probably need to keep at least one tutoring rebel in play through the turn so its likely that we would need to drop the Incubator, not get wrathed that turn, and then proceed to not be tampered with in the following turn to make this work. I think its a good card and I use it in my Marton Stromgald deck, but I think we probably need more large anthems to really reliably get away with this in here.
Staff of Nin its card draw and slight pokes. The pokes can be used to harass ETB and utility creatures opponents have. It can poke at planeswalkers to keep them in check and possibly screw with equipment being put onto ETB chumps. In general, I dont bother too much with poking players as it usually just irritates them without making any real progress. The draw is nice and the primary reason for running it. Its really freaking slow though to generate value but its hard to come across good draw in white.
~~~~~Seven Mana~~~~~
Akroma's Memorial this gives a lot of cool abilities. My biggest problem with including it is that it generally eats up a turn to cast it and everyone over reacts over it because its good abilities. Its hard to make as much use of the abilities it gives in here as the amount of hate it generally draws. Due to this, I tend to not run it unless I REALLY NEED IT. I think its hard to make it pay off and the small pokes rebels can achieve is not generally that effective for how much of a pain it is to cast and keep in play.
~~~~~Crazy Mana~~~~~
Possessed Portal it has potential to just lock up the gamestate as it is. It is really nice against decks that just rely on wheeling their hands through card drawing and if nobody has an answer for this card in their hand it can be difficult to break through it. It is also worth noting that it has good synergy with some cards such as Unexpectedly Absent and Lapse of Certainty where they are potentially just a short stall but in this case they can help escalate a hard lock.
Land Tax it guarantees land drops and it can work to bloat up your hand if you have something like Scroll Rack or Teferi's Puzzle Box to push cards back into the deck and draw other cards with.
Inheritance card draw in mono white. Unfortunately it can be sort of hard to control when this happens and the mana per card is fairly bad in general. The upside though is that this deck tends to keep most of its mana up and available so it shouldn't be that hard to pay the mana when it does happen.
~~~~~Two Mana~~~~~
Blind Obedience it can be used as somewhat of a stax style of effect to tax opponents resources. It works well with effects that control untapping of permanents as well.
Flickerform it can be used as a means of protection for Lin Sivvi. The biggest problem I have with this sort of effect is that if you ever tap out, opponents will consider using spot removal on you just because they cant catch you outside of that situation. So, if you run something like this you might have to keep the mana to flicker it out up at most all times.
Luminarch Ascension its an ANGEL CANNON!!!!! Seriously, when this thing goes active, its a scarry thing. It really doesnt need much support but being a defensive toolbox deck, we can generally speaking defend it alright to go active. It will draw some serious hate though in general so prepare for it to eat every flavor of disenchant ever printed lol. It works great though if your meta doesn't run real heavy on spot removal effects though. Even if they do, it has a chance of just running away with the game.
Militia's Pride it could make an interesting effect for heavy anthem builds or stax based builds. The tokens come very cheaply for the mana per body breakdown. Generally it has some issues with the fact that its hard to swarm with nontoken creatures but they can add up quickly in anthem and stax builds.
~~~~~Three Mana~~~~~
Act of Authority it outright exiles a target when it comes in and you can exile a second target the next turn. It sort of has some political aspects though and its likely that the person you just exiled a card from is going to be slightly irate at you. The upside though is that everyone has to consider if they have good targets in play or good things in their deck still that they wouldn't want this used again against them so its.... interesting and slightly political. I run a LOT of artifacts though in this deck so with close to 30 targets to be return attacked its a little sketchy. It seems like a card that is best used in a deck with relatively few artifacts / enchantments.
Aura of Silence it can act as as removal or as a tax and slowing effect on opponents until you want to remove something. Its nice to have access to with Enlightened Tutor in a pinch. Its also the right mana cost for Sun Titan if you want to run him as the fact that it has a sacrifice use is nice with a potential repeatable rez effect.
Crackdown it works well with stax style of effects such as Winter Orb / Static Orb / Kismet. It can also be used with Whipcorder to tap down opponents creatures to swing past and since it only hits nonwhite creatures, we can equip up our guys and swing in without worry about it affecting us. Its an all around useful stax effect. I wouldn't really add it lightly so much as adding it with a stax style of equip build.
Fanatical Devotion it can be used to keep rebels in play in some wraths or it can be used to bail out in a tuck effect or whatever. Due to having access to Changeling Hero and the ability to tutor for our commander though, I think it has less importance in general but I think it can still be used as a decent sac outlet.
Ghostly Prison token defense 101 here. This is a bread and butter pillowfort card. It is really effective against swarm armies though as it greatly hinders their ability to inflate in size as well as attack you in the same turn. The downside to these style of defenses is that token decks tend to have good answers for them but on the flip side they will have a hard time attacking you until they can get this out of the way. Its unfortunate when this just drops out of nowhere on you though.
Karmic Justice it can be used to dissuade opponents from blowing up mana stones and such. It makes it harder to sweep your non-creatures in general. I generally dont really like running it though as it often gets spot removed before you take a sweeper. Its often a situational do nothing style of card too often.
Mobilization generally speaking, its sort of a lot per token but it works as a nice mana dump. Rebels are a pain to mass multiply and generally speaking this handles multiplaying bodies in play a lot easier than rebels do. It also doesn't hurt as much if we eat a wrath due to tokens in play than having a big swarm of rebels as then we have to deal with tucking and tutoring the rebels.
Nevermore you can entirely shut someone out of their commander being cast or a key card from their deck. It can be used to stumble a combo player assuming you know how their deck works as well. Its a nice card but has to be preemptively cast which makes it sort of awkward in a lot of cases.
Prison Term its a solid arrest effect. I tend to prefer Faith's Fetters for the versatility but this can be moved to new threats and shifted onto a hexproof commander that might come in after casting it.
Sacred Mesa its a cheap mana per token generator. It works well at getting a swarm of tokens quickly in a deck designed to achieve large mana. The fact that we have to sacrifice a token per turn is sort of unfortunate but if you spend more than 6 mana in a turn on tokens, it becomes much more lucrative than Mobilization.
Story Circle it can be used as a pillowfort effect to keep opponents away. Its nice that it is versatile as to what color you choose but in general, the deck already accomplishes most of what this might contribute on its own with the rebels.
~~~~~Four Mana~~~~~
Diversionary Tactics it can be used to manipulate opponents creatures. In general though, we already have access to Whipcorder though so I would be hesitant to play this but I think it could work well in a meta that runs creature heavy and wrath light. You could focus more on multiplying rebels and tap down problems as they arise with this effect.
Endless Horizons it can be used to get some card advantage in terms of consistently hitting your land drops or stripping most of the remaining lands from your deck so you dont have to draw them. I tend to play it sort of conservatively in that I usually go for somewhere in the range of 4-7 lands with this card as much more than that and it feels like you have stripped the lands from your deck. It could feasibly be used with Goblin Charbelcher to serve as a big cannon if you really want. It also works well with things like Scroll Rack and Teferi's Puzzle Box to turn into card drawing.
Faith's Fetters its actually a really solid arrest style of card. It works on any permanent and it gains some life. I like it to lock up commanders in play or just stop anything thats a problem. In my mind, this is one of the best white arrest effects due to versatility. If you want more answers for opponent's commanders its a good one to consider.
Karma really going a bit deep here with this one but it can be utilized with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (yes its legal to run in a mono white deck) and used to slowly tax opponents out of the game. Karma can be tutored for in a few ways since its an enchantment and with access to Weathered Wayfarer and Expedition Map to get Urborg, it could be something to toy with but I think its more of a cute interaction than something legitimate. Stern Judge also works as a second copy of Karma. You can use Children of Korlis to offset the loss and outlast opponents. Its also worth noting, that most people run Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in BX decks anyways.
Kismet it works as a stax based effect to cripple game development. It works really well with things that control untapping as well such as Winter Orb, Hokori, Dust Drinker, and Static Orb to make it even more difficult to play into the game.
Marshal's Anthem its an anthem and can act as a large rez effect. Unfortunately, most of the rebels aren't worth spending rez on so you probably want to run a good number of non rebel creatures to make this worthwhile.
~~~~~Five Mana~~~~~
Cathars' Crusade it can really bring in a ton of power to your guys. The biggest problem I have with it is that it sort of plays itself out and tells opponents that you will be coming hard soon and you probably should get blown up across the board before that happens. It brings a TON of power but you have to be able to slow roll a really obvious threat which I generally dont like doing.
Mystic Barrier this card is crazy useful against opposing aggro / voltron decks. You can shift the attacks away from you and more importantly you can potentially shift attacks in the direction you want them to be. This is 100% pillowforting but its nice in the fact that someone with a TON of mana cant push through you and you dont lock up all attacking so much as just push it around you. The biggest downside is that trying to swarm out becomes more difficult too but you can still usually make a productive attack as you get to pick the direction of your attack making it so you can still attack a majority of opponents. It looks super fun to toy with but I think its a bit of a meta call and a personal flavor call to include it.
Sphere of Safety pillowfort style of card. It can work alright but you have to be sort of heavy on the enchantment build. If you dont have a ton of enchantments in your list I would suggest going with Ghostly Prison instead.
~~~~~Six Mana~~~~~
Martyr's Bond I tend to dislike this sort of effect as its really odd in the fact that opponents may shoot your permanents to chain down and hit another opponents permanents and pick up value in their removal. That said, it can do some fun things with the sacrifice based creatures. Overall, I dont really feel that it works that well overall.
True Conviction it can work as a value generator and damage output in an equipment type of build. Lots of the good equipment do things each time you deal combat damage so double strike can ramp up the amount of equipment triggers. The increased output and lifegain are useful things as well especially if you go up against opposing aggro and or swarm styles of decks.
---INSTANT---
~~~~~One Mana~~~~~
Condemn it can work as general tuck. The thing is, commanders that attack are sort of this deck's specialty so I wouldn't worry about those commanders so much as the utility ones which are harder to deal with. Due to this, I strongly discourage use of this card in a rebels deck and for the most part as a card at all in this format due to how niche its use generally is.
Enlightened Tutor we dont have access to many tutors for non rebels. The artifact package in this deck has some very key and useful cards including things like Sensei's Divining Top which I almost always want. It can fit a lot of roles depending on what the needs of the situation are though. Its unfortunate that its card disadvantage but I think its still great even if it is disadvantage because of its versatility.
Path to Exile really solid creature spot removal. This deck generally does well against most creatures you would naturally want to use spot removal against though. There are some utility based creatures such as Consecrated Sphinx and Deadeye Navigator that can be really necessary to remove. Generally speaking, I found that most spot removal that works specifically for creatures was mostly unnecessary for this deck though so I sort of moved to more of the ones that can target anything instead of the cheap creature specific ones because too often, creatures or non commander creatures were not what I really wanted solid removal for.
Scout's Warning it can be used to flash in Lin Sivvi which can minimize the amount of time she is exposed in play. Its a little underwhelming though since it only allows you to do it once though.
Swords to Plowshares solid removal for sure. This deck generally does well against most creatures you would naturally want to use spot removal against though. There are some utility based creatures such as Consecrated Sphinx and Deadeye Navigator that can be really necessary to remove. Generally speaking, I found that most spot removal that works specifically for creatures was mostly unnecessary for this deck though so I sort of moved to more of the ones that can target anything instead of the cheap creature specific ones because too often, creatures or non commander creatures were not what I really wanted solid removal for.
Tithe card advantage plain and simple. It can grab us Mistveil Plains as well which is handy as turn two we can Tithe and drop the Mistveil Plains when I normally dont have much to do anyways. There is also a trick to Tithe if you bother running fetchlands where you can crack it, and while its ability is on the stack you can Tithe in which you will have one less land in play before you resolve finding that land. Generally speaking, anytime you dont go first you should have no issue getting the two lands from this card though.
~~~~~Two Mana~~~~~
Dawn Charm it has some nice versatility with the option of fogging, it can push Lin Sivvi through a wrath that you are short of mana to champion out of, and occasionally there are spells like Mind Twist or Recurring Insight that could target us.
Disenchant decently solid spot removal that is generally versatile. It doesn't help the deck's card advantage options to one for one spot removal things in multiplayer but these effects are sometimes necessary and its nice to have cheap ones to do it with.
Renounce the Guilds it can be useful against all the multicolored decks that EDH generally brings. Its unfortunate that the opponent gets to pick the card to sacrifice but seeing as its instant speed for cheap mana and they all have to sacrifice, it packs a bit of a punch. The more mono colored decks you see in your meta the worse this gets but it seems nice to potentially make multiple opponents each sacrifice their commanders.
Unexpectedly Absent it can serve as a tuck effect. It can target anything at instant speed is part of what I love about this effect. You can catch someone about to tutor for something and tuck something in response or even just push something important to someone 5 cards down at instant speed. The versatility is in what all it can catch and if they are doing a search, we can tuck something for 2 mana. I view it as like an additional Oblation.
~~~~~Three Mana~~~~~
Ghostway its nice to dodge a wrath. It doesnt do a lot else but it saves time in recovery. We often dont cause the wraths to happen due to our board unless you are really swarming hard with the rebels. I like this a lot more than other options to try to recover from wraths because if someone casts a tuck or exile wrath, this is the only one that really works right.
Lapse of Certainty its a good way to stall game ending effects and buy time for answering threats or trying to kill the player trying to go off. It can work as a surprise answer to combo decks or to stall a wrath that comes at a key time you dont want. It can be a handy trick for sure but its just a one turn stall so its sort of dependent on what it will work against.
Oblation versatile removal. It gets anything in play for one low cost. The draw downside is mostly ok in comparison to getting rid of something problematic.
Rootborn Defenses its cheap to buy and it can shrug off wraths. Its an alright budget card but generally speaking, I would rather see Ghostway or Faith's Reward used over it.
White Sun's Zenith CAT ARMY!!!! This thing makes a lot of power in tokens at instant speed. It is one of the primary swarm tactics to end games with. I generally try not to use it until I can go off hard.
~~~~~Four Mana~~~~~
Faith's Reward it can be a good move to recover from wrath effects. The biggest setup you can get is to recover from a large scale sweeper like Oblivion Stone with this effect or reset after an Armageddon effect. When looking at this against regular wraths it tends to be inferior to Ghostway due to the fact that Faith's Reward cannot be used against tuck wraths and exile wraths.
Ray of Distortion its not cheap to use but it gives the option of two spot remove effects. Its sort of clunky but considering its a draw / go deck that is short on card draw it can be useful to consider. Its really clunky though...
Return to Dust solid exile removal. You can use it in a pinch on opponents turns or use it on your own for a larger result. The fact that it exiles can be incredibly useful as it shuts out the option of recursion and cuts through to indestructible artifacts.
~~~~~Five Mana~~~~~
Miraculous Recovery its a solid rez spell considering it can rez any creature at instant speed. It is a bit underwhelming though if you dont run a bit heavier on the non rebel creatures though.
~~~~~Six Mana~~~~~
Banishing Stroke it tucks anything at instant speed. Its sort of expensive at 6 mana but we play draw / go anyways so we can usually afford to pay it if necessary. The miracle effect on it can be useful if you are juggling it or just randomly when tearing it off the top.
---SORCERY---
~~~~~One Mana~~~~~
Steelshaper's Gift its solid in an equipment build as it very cheaply gets an equipment of your choice to hand.
~~~~~Two Mana~~~~~
Gift of Estates lands into hand mean that you can keep playing them out for turns to come. Inflating hand size can also be turned into card draw with some effects like Scroll Rack and Teferi's Puzzle Box.
Martial Coup it can wrath the board and leave you with a bunch of tokens. The problem with it is really that it is incredibly slow though. Its nice though to recover from a wrath with a big wave of tokens though.
Planar Birth this can be used with mass LD to recover as the multicolored decks wont recover as well or against mass LD to recover the landbase. The key here is that its cheap to cast, and opponents wont get nearly as much value from it as we will.
Revoke Existence its cheap and it deals with something permanently. Its sorcery speed though and spot removal at that. I would only really look at it if you are having issues with opponents recuring their toys a lot or indestructible targets.
~~~~~Three Mana~~~~~
Dust to Dust its nice that it exiles two targets but it is generally just less versatile than Return to Dust for not much less mana. I wouldnt suggest running it unless you really start having some issues with artifacts and indestructible ones at that.
Entreat the Angels this can open up a big wave of ass kicking angels. This is best utilized with topdeck manipulation such as Sensei's Divining Top and or CARD]Scroll Rack[/CARD] to juggle this and draw it as needed. Sensei's Divining Top in specific can juggle and draw it at instant speed allowing for an instant speed token swarm that hits at end of turn.
Idyllic Tutor its a solid tutor depending on how many good enchantments you have and what your priority with tutoring for them is. They go to hand which is good but it comes down to what sort of how highly you value your enchantments and if there is one you are often looking for.
Retribution of the Meek it wraths big creatures and leaves the rebels mostly alone. Its cheap to cast as well. The downside is that it lacks versatility if you needed to get small creatures as well it doesn't really have options to it. It does duck our own creatures though which is useful.
Survival Cache it has net card draw to it and small lifegain. Its a small little cantrip effect but it has net card draw to it so I think its kind of cool. Its rather small scale though so there is nothing really huge about it and three mana for its effect is a little heavy I think.
~~~~~Four Mana~~~~~
Armageddon mass LD, there isn't a lot to say about it other than make sure that you are ok with running this style of tactic before delving into building around it. Its not something I would really lightly splash around but its possible to just add one or two LD effects to a list and run with it and just wait for a good moment to hit it.
Cataclysm being that we are more of a small utility style of swarm deck, I just dont really see how this could be that useful to us. I would personally run the straight Armageddon effects and leave this one be for this style of deck. You ideally want a big centrally used beater commander to get away with this.
Decree of Justice with this card, I like 98% of the time always use its cycle option for instant speed soldiers. The surprise factor of this card is what you want as we can follow it up with Mirror Entity as a wincon and puch people for lethal. Very very very rarely will you ever consider making angels with this card as the better option.
Ravages of War a very expensive to purchase Armageddon effect. Run it only if you have tested and like the Armageddon style of builds and only after including the other runnable Armageddon effects. If you have the money to spare, adding another one of these effects to your deck is huge since we lack the ability to tutor for them and our card draw is not great.
Wrath of God generally speaking, I tend to encourage people to run other wraths other than these four mana options. If you have issues with hyper fast decks like Edric, take a look at adding 4 mana wraths but generally speaking, they lack any sort of versatility and I often dont suggest using them. This is at least stronger than Day of Judgement because of the no regeneration clause but I dont suggest running either of them.
~~~~~Five Mana~~~~~
Conqueror's Pledge its a slower card but it gives a lot of tokens for the mana. It can be kicked too for about twice the mana for twice the effect. Its nothing really special but if you are hurting for token production its not bad.
Increasing Devotion its a slower effect but it has flashback and makes a lot of guys in both waves of it. I tend to stay away from sorcery speed token spawn if I can but its not bad if you are looking for cost effective ways to swarm the field.
Hallowed Burial in a pinch, blowing out the creatures is necessary. This deck's objective is to keep living so if someone is over extending what you can defend against this is worth considering. I often like to set it up by end of turn tutoring for Changeling Hero and hiding Lin Sivvi from this effect. It still has a chance to backfire though if someone has spot removal to take the hero out though so think about this before attempting to do it. Its also good to run sacrifice outlets to protect Lin Sivvi from this.
Rout the fact that it can wrath the board at instant speed as a surprise is a nice option to have. Generally speaking, its hard to champion Lin Sivvi with Changeling Hero and do this in one action and it gives away your play if you champion her much more than immediately before this resolves.
~~~~~Six Mana~~~~~
Austere Command its good to be able to sweep some of the noncreature things and generally speaking, the 4+ mana sweeper option leaves us mostly intact which is nice.
Catastrophe its a versatile wrath that can clear lands if you are ahead or creatures if you are behind. I would not include it if you are not willing to use it on land on average though. The intention behind this card should be to use it for land with a fallback plan of using it on creatures.
Storm Herd it costs a lot of mana but it brings a lot of guys with as well. It ideally works best with something like Vedalken Orrery to just surprise flash a giant token wave in but it can be slow rolled. Expect it to provoke every sort of wrath imaginable though when slow rolling something like this. It works well against playgroups that run less control and wraths though because they have less chance of removing it.
---PLANESWALKERS---
~~~~~Four Mana~~~~~
Ajani Goldmane his -1 ability can be useful for swarm tactics. Generally speaking though, it takes too long to really ramp up the swarm in EDH. His ability to act as an anthem back in standard doesnt really transition nearly as well as in multiplayer EDH you have to expect more wraths and make your move much faster. Most of his abilities just dont fit but his -1 can act as an alright anthem effect.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant creatures every turn and the option of possibly hitting her ult which generally makes people unhappy. Its hard to defend her though so expect a lot of hate and difficulty keeping her afloat against multiple opponents.
~~~~~Five Mana~~~~~
Elspeth Tirel she spawns larger waves of tokens every other turn and has some lifegain options which are handy against the swarm style of decks. She has options to wrath too which can be useful to have access to. She also tends to draw a lot less hate since her abilities aren't as scary since her ult isn't game ending or anything.
Gideon Jura he has a few useful tricks in his arsenal. He can taunt opponents creatures into walking into combat trick rebels like Defiant Vanguard or use his minus ability to kill off creatures that Whipcorder taps down. He has several useful tricks to him and the fact that he doesn't have an ult often decreases the amount of hate he draws. He works well as a beater as well if people are all wrath happy too.
~~~~~Six Mana~~~~~
Elspeth, Sun's Champion big token waves as a +1 and her -3 ability misses most of our rebels. She has a really nice set of abilities for this deck and her ult is a really really nice anthem. She is probably the best walker for this deck printed to date.
~~~~~Seven Mana~~~~~
Karn Liberated exile removal of any card. Its hard to keep him around but occasionally you can use him for a few turns. My general assumption though is that he will use his -3 the turn he comes in and get mauled by the table though. I have literally seen people Cryptic Command to tap creatures just to swing in and kill him.
---LAND---
Buried Ruin its a nice recovery option and its on a land so it doesn't really need to be used immediately to still get really good value from it. There are lots of very useful artifacts in this deck that I like having access to.
Emeria, the Sky Ruin random free rez has some solid uses. Generally speaking, its not that impressive though even when its active as most of my creatures are rebels. Its not bad though by any means but I dont build my deck around getting this or getting it online as most of the time its value generation is really small.
High Market sac outlets are nice to have. They can help get Lin Sivvi out or stop theft from happening. I wish there was a functional reprint of this land as its just so useful for so many decks.
Kor Haven its a nice deterrent. Since we are essentially a draw / go style of deck its easy to keep up and available. Its also very useful against protection from white swords and such as we can keep them off of us with the mazes.
Mistveil Plains its useful for tucking since it can tuck things for cheaper than Lin Sivvi and it can tuck things other than rebels. It can be helpful when defending against things like Chancellor of the Spires effects assuming you are even the best target.
Mystifying Maze another maze effect. Its useful to have against pro white swords and such and since the deck is essentially draw / go its easy to keep up and available if needed. It still taps for mana too so I like it.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx This deck often has quite a bit of board presence through its rebels so this land is a nice one to just generate some solid mana for us. It still taps for colorless so the downside of running it is relatively low all around.
Strip Mine you never know when someone will drop a problematic land into play. Having this handy for Cabal Coffers and friends is useful. The number of land answer lands like this sort of dictate how much of a problem utility and mass mana generating lands are for you. I run relatively light on them since I am not running sword setups so I dont need to worry about mazes much and outside of someone really abusing a coffers, I dont really care that much.
Temple of the False God it ramps and its a land. The only real downside is if you end up opening handing this and getting stuck on lands. Outside of that, it works alright as some ramp.
Tower of the Magistrate it screws with opponents equipment which can be very useful. Its fun to shoot down a Lightning Greaves equip or if someone tries sliding in with a sword you can take out their protection and deal with them then.
Thespian's Stage useful land to do whatever is needed. It taps for mana immediately and its only real downside is that its colorless mana when it starts out. Its very useful to turn into a utility land or land that taps for multiple mana though.
Winding Canyons allows us to flash in creatures. This is occasionally helpful if your plan is to replay Lin Sivvi as it can keep her out of some wrath situations and allow you to keep options up or bluff them.
Change Log
03-03-2012 CUTS:
Ramosian Captain it is essentially one of the more expensive of the rebel tutor creatures. The 2/2 first strike body doesn't really make up for the expensive use tutor. I want either a decent creature or a decently costed tutor and this is sort of a bad bastardization of the two.
Ramosian Revivalist since the commander of the deck can tuck the rebels and then I can re tutor them I just haven't found this needed so far. I could be wrong but I just dont see this working so great so far for me.
Eternal Dragon not impressed at all. I dont know what I was hoping for when I added him but he wasn't fun to draw and I have better things to do than recur him. If I had a deck with less things to do I could possibly see using him but I always have something to be doing in this deck.
Jhovall Queen She was... ehhh ok I wasn't real impressed but with the playtesting where I did tutor her up I had wished I had tutored into Cho-Arrim Bruiser instead. Tapping things down is solid when it comes to connecting with swords and what not. I think I will try him out instead.
Rout I found that I sort of swarm the board a lot. The only time I would really feel I need a wrath it seems so far is against a token deck. Generally speaking though I have the capability to out creature other people with rebels. I will try running a wrath less for now and see how it goes.
Sundering Titan I just wasn't really impressed... he is ok but not really what I wanted when I drew him. I would rather something that might end the game at that cost in this deck and I just didn't get that vibe off of him in this list. Also I have relatively no ways to really abuse him to the point of making him good in here.
Karmic Guide I have this feeling that this deck isn't going to be as much about rezing a big fatty back into play. I dont have much for ways to abuse the Guide either. As much as I love this card in so many decks I didn't get the vibe that it belonged in here. If I ever dropped it in to rez a rebel it would probably be a bad move so meh.
ADDS:
Sun Titan additional rez outlet. He can rez a lot of the rebels which is really nice as well as most of the equipment too. He is a great beater to top it off so he seems like a great add to me.
Cho-Arrim Bruiser I want to try him in the place of the queen. I might end up just not worrying about having a big beater rebel but he seems like he could be incredibly good with some of the swords and what not. The fact that he gets to tap down 2 creatures on attacking could be great for connecting for some damage.
Knight of the White Orchid I realized when I was on my way out last night that I didnt have him in my list so I put him in my list on my way out. He is solid.
Return to Dust good versatile removal. It can pick up 2 targets which is great or I can instant cast it in a pinch.
Enlightened Tutor I considered a few options for this last add. I think this gives me a good versatile option. I considered either ramp or art / enchant removal but this sort of gives me the option of either.
Batterskull -> Quietus Spike I really like batterskull due to the fact that it can easily make creatures titan sized. The vigilance is amazing on rebels as well giving me the option to attack + block + totor with the creature all in one. That being said though it is expensive to move around and I dont really see it having a huge game winning approach to it. The spike will do a lot more for ending games and deathtouch is still solid on defense.
Crovax, Ascendant Hero -> Eldrazi Monument Once I get going I can easily pick up 2-3 creatures in a turn with the rebels so sacing one a turn to the monument should be relatively minimal. I doubt I can rely on the monument sticking long however it is great until it goes. I figure it is worth trying out. Chrovax just has such a small impact. I love how I can bounce him but he doesn't kick in hard enough in my opinion.
Nim Deathmantle -> Strata Scythe giving up survivability for raw power. We will see how it does but for now I feel like I need a way to actually accomplish something which the Scythe does nicely.
Scout's Warning -> Ghostway Scout's Warning is just sort of ok outside of flashing in my commander when resetting. Ghostway on the other hand gives me a wrath resistance which is greatly needed.
Remember the Fallen -> Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite I was hoping that Remember the Fallen would be a decent way to get artifacts back to hand but I just feel like it is probably better to keep moving. The card seems to sit dead in my hand for quite a bit of the time. Also it doesn't really help much with reusing rebels due to the fact that I can just tuck and re tutor them. Elesh Norn gives me another possible wincon as well as some control against opposing agro / token.
03-14-2012 CUTS:
Cho-Manno, Revolutionary too slow and everyone has evasion on fricking everything. I never tutor him and he is almost never used here. People dont use non evasive attackers that dont swarm. It generally has evasion or is swarming.
Duplicant mehhhhhh I have some instant speed things to do essentially this. I dont need a creature at sorcery speed when I can just threaten to do this. I would rather have an instant speed option if possible.
Lightning Greaves I never needed these. My rebels chain together so tucking isnt that big of a problem. Also I tend to be tapped out off of casting my commander so meh.
Eldrazi Monument -> Darksteel Plate I just have a hard time really using the Monument in here. It was good on paper but it sits in my hand a lot. I would rather just play the plate and have a hard to remove guy I can block with.
ADDS:
Mind Stone I need more fast early mana stones. This gets me some mana to move arround with in the early game and I like how it can cycle off. This deck plays a lot of draw / go so I should be able to pop it off for a card in a sweeper.
Relic of Progenitus Some basic graveyard hate. I can tuck my rebels before blowing this which is nice. I probably will need more than this in here but I like how it cycles itself which is nice. For now I will start light but Stonecloaker might be soon after here.
Umezawa's Jitte it lends a bit more utility removal which is nice. I have been wanting something I can manipulate for some multi kills decently and I think this will to some point help against some swarm style of decks. It also gives some lifegain options which can be ok.
03-19-2012 CUTS:
Condemn it would end up sitting in hand a lot. My rebel tutor ability really gives me a lot of defensive capability already as is. If someone is stupid enough to swing at me when I have rebels ready and mana up they usually take a rebel response. I found that this was less needed due to that. Plus the constraint on attackers only felt a bit narrow. Sometimes creatures need to be answered before they swing or commanders who dont swing need answers.
Path to Exile This one was a bit of a harder cut. I really do like path but I just find that singe spot removal in mono white isn't enough due to the lack of card advantage in mono white. Due to this I cut this out.
Mind Stone Decent little small ramp but I find it is probably one of my weaker links in the deck. I swapped it out for Endless Horizons instead which will hopefully give me several land drops and all in all give me better results. This swap will give me less ramp but give me some maintained land drops.
Darksteel Plate I just found that I wasn't using these defensive equipments enough. I was rarely tutoring for them and rarely happy to draw them. Due to this I am going to cut them. I did like having my commander able to chump block like anything and everything but even then... meh.
ADDS:
CARD]Oblivion Stone[/CARD] I was going to put Akroma's Vengeance in here at first but then I realized that this deck does tons of things at instant speed at the end of my opponents turns. This would open up the option to wrath at the end of their turns if need be or in response to something. It also gives me an artifact wrath to tutor for / recur so that is nice. Hopefully it will pan out as I felt like I needed another wrath or two. I might end up needing another wrath yet but we will see how adding just one more works for now.
Disenchant some basic artifact / enchantment hate. I considered running a few other things but in the end I liked the fact that this is instant speed, cheap, and versatile. I didn't like the sorcery speed stuff and I didn't like the stuff that only handled one or the other. I considered this being another sweeper effect for them but I think a little bit of just emergency spot removal is good as well.
Batterskull another decent lifegain option for the deck. I love that I can protect it with mana up as well and beating in with 5/5+ sized creatures with vigilance / lifegain seems quite solid. Time for more testing with this and I hope it pans out.
Endless Horizons guaranteed land drops is good in this deck. I always need more lands and I often sputter out of lands to drop in the mid to late game due to the lack of card draw. I would love to drop this and exile 4/5 lands as that seems like some solid land dropping.
03-28-2012 CUTS:
Sword of Feast and Famine I dont tend to try to overextend my board position as much in multiplayer games but if I intended on tutoring into tutoring rebels a bit more often I could see this being more useful.
Strata Scythe I just find that it operates a bit too similarly to the Quietus Spike. I generally speaking have a few evasive creatures so I find the spike does more damage and provides me with deathtouch on defense. It is possible for the Scythe to give a good buff as well but I just find it a bit redundant to have them both now as well as Batterskull.
Shield Dancer The more games I get the more I realize I never tutor for or really want this rebel. Generally speaking if something big without flying is attacking me I go for Defiant Vanguard. There are a few situations in which the Shield Dancer is better however the paying mana to deflect the damage is a bit of a pain in the ass.
ADDS:
Teferi's Puzzle Box I tend to sit behind a lot of the same cards for a lot of time. I thought the ability to just sort of cycle through them might be good. It would also help move some of the rebels that I draw through the deck. On top of that this card is amazing with Scroll Rack which allows me to sort of preserve some of my hand from turn to turn. It is also highly irritating to combo decks due to the difficulty in keeping multiple cards in hand for combos. It also works really well with Land Tax which is cool.
Lapse of Certainty I wanted to see how this panned out. I play mostly just draw / go so it is sort of funny to have a counterspell randomly in mono white. I actually had it as the nin player tried going off last night and screwed with his Mana Geyser. He had a Counter for it but the look on his face as the mono white player tried to counter his mana production was quite funny.
Helm of Possession I can easily grab some chump creatures that aren't important. I want to see if this ends up panning out. I have several sac outlet lands as well that I could ditch stolen creatures to.
Plains -> Tithe it should be a simple swap. I like that it nets me several lands and can fetch me Mistveil Plains.
04-06-2012
Helm of Possession -> Luminarch Ascension I would say they probably bring about as much hate between the two of them however Luminarch has so much more potential output. This deck is very defensive so blocking for the Ascension really isn't much of a problem plus the fact that Sun Titan can recur it seems solid. If I can get a bunch of bodies out that is what I am shooting for in this deck. The bonus here is that they are big enough that they really dont need the pump effect to make them good.
1 Plains -> Gift of Estates generally speaking I am good for the first several lands but it is the problem of continuing my land drops. Hopefully going down to 37 lands shouldn't hurt my ability to hit 3 - 4+ lands in my opening. Still as long as I can get 2 down this can get me going from there.
Marshal's Anthem -> Sacred Mesa I like the anthem however the biggest thing it does for me is gets me bodies. Sacred Mesa also gives me bodies and probably a lot more. I can always use my commander to move creatures back through the list. Sacred Mesa gives me a cheap option to swarm the board with. From here I can use one of several pump effects to try to close the game out or just use them as flying blockers.
04-23-2012
Disenchant -> Banishing Stroke The new Banishing Stroke gives me the option to hit most of the same targets but with a tuck effect. The Miracle cost is super cheap and it is still instant speed even if I don't go that route.
Lapse of Certainty -> Entreat the Angels Lapse of Certainty is fun however I feel like I need a few more wincons and a swarm of angels sounds like just the trick.
Steelshaper's Gift -> Dreamstone Hedron swapping out some of my equipment tutoring for another ramp / draw effect. A lot of my big token producing needs more big mana and I like the Hedron due to its ability to give me good mana and still sacrifice for some cards.
Cho-Arrim Bruiser -> Cho-Manno, Revolutionary I had sort of a problem where I just never tutored for the Bruiser. Originally I built the list with more of an equipment emphasis in this deck but I have been pushing it more of a responsive and control outlet sort of a deck. Cho gives me that nice free block where I dont need to worry about it other than for trample or flying.
Endless Horizons -> Idyllic Tutor Endless is usually just a worse Land Tax to be honest. Adding an enchantment tutor just sort of smooths things out in my opinion. I can always go get land tax if that is what I need or I can grab something else once I am established. I like the bigger versatility here.
Stonehewer Giant -> Thousand-Year Elixir The equipment package has been getting smaller and less important. I just haven't been as wanting to slow roll equipment and my package has been getting smaller as well. The ability to tap creatures the turn they land is really useful here and the untap is nice as well allowing me to really pull off a lot of tutoring in a row. My sac and exile creatures having haste would be very beneficial as well to give them haste.
Reveillark -> Gideon Jura The targets for being rezed are sort of poor here. I like Sun Titan for his non-creature rez a lot more. I have tons of good blocking outlets and Gideon gives me some removal outlets as well as a 6/6 beater if need be. Forcing attackers can be quite fun especially against defensive or utility creatures. I have a lot of great defensive creatures as well to maul them with if they come my way.
Quietus Spike -> Darksteel Plate I have wanted to try something else out. The cost + equip of the spike is really steep and I dont have many good targets for putting it on in here.
Winding Canyons -> Terrain Generator with some of the multiple land grab cards in here I wanted to see if I couldnt get some value out of a Terrain Generator in here. It isnt cheap but it is usable at instant speed so after deciding what I might tutor for I could still throw an extra land in. This deck just doesn't use Winding Canyons much outside of after getting wrathed.
09-13-2012
Cho-Manno, Revolutionary -> Jhovall Queen I have yet to ever test her and while I have my doubts the fact that she has vigilance and a titan cant kill her does seem interesting. I can always use her to poke at people while keeping a strong defense up. I dont want to bring down my rebel count too much so I always want to open up the versatility if possible. I really wish I could get a more standard quality rebel beater replacement however until rebels see another cycle which I really hope they do some day I am stuck with her being one of the biggest rebels out there. That having been said she has a lot of values which we dont see much anywhere else in the rebel options so I am going to give her a try. Cho-Manno was giving me some issues with the fact that I just seem to always have something better to go get. Jhovall still gives me something to swing out with and defend myself.
Zealot il-Vec -> Children of Korlis there have been several times now where I really wished I had a second one mana rebel to fetch. There are several positives to this guy including the ability to negate random large non commander swings which aren't overly common but happen. The ability to negate all those annoying Sorrin Markov style abilities which I absolutely loathe. And if nothing else it gives me a creature that I can tutor for when I just have a random extra mana to spare. Zealot il-Vec was alright but a little bit meta dependent. If you see more x/1 commanders I like it a bit more.
Basilisk Collar -> Elspeth Tirel planeswalkers have done really well for me so far as this deck is very defensive. The collar came in to see if it was any good with Zealot il-Vec however I had some issues ever getting them together. It was cool but fragile and without them being combined I was having issues with it. Elspeth spanws a lot of creatures at a time. Her ultimate isn't as impressive but the speed in which she vomits creatures into play is quite good.
Darksteel Plate -> Staff of Nin this adds more card draw to the deck. I get around card draw a lot by the rebel's tutors however seeing more cards in a turn is still really solid. I haven't been able to really get the same value out of the plate as I would like to see from it. It doesn't protect all of my creatures and protecting just my commander isn't really good enough for inclusion.
12-05-2012
Jhovall Queen -> Gilded Lotus I have like never tutored for a fatty in this deck and I think I have finally given up on her. What I do need though is more big mana and ramp. Lotus seems well fit for an add to this deck since I can tap my mana down and still have 3 up to cast a rebel and most of my guys cost 3 so it seems like a nice shoe in.
Sun Titan -> Everflowing Chalice I needed more ramp and none of my rebes were worth the time to recover. So I decided to scrap the titan as without fetchlands / useful creatures to rez he just didnt have much for targets. It came down to like needing to throw things away for him to rez into play or some such jank. He just wasnt working out which is sad. More ramp = a good thing for this deck though.
Stoneforge Mystic -> Plains the land count was too light and I was realizing I never really did much with my equipment in here. Skullclamp is still ok but I dont really like using it to eat rebels all that much. Since I am cutting the sword as well I wont have at least 2 equipment in the list I decided to cut my tutors for the clamp. As amazing as clamp is as a card it is only decently solid in this list.
Sword of Fire and Ice -> Plains I never wanted to cast or equip this stupid thing... I dont have a lot of attacking rebels and it was never what I wanted to do with my turn. I had some entire games with sitting sword in hand without casting it so I decided it was time to cut it from this list. I need more lands though so this puts my land count at a better place for this deck.
12-10-2012
Karn Liberated -> Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre I decided that the effect is actually similar here. The difference is that I can actually quite easily defend myself from an Eldrazi so stealing him from me doesn't really hurt much since he is so easily answered by my lockdowns and removal. Karn is cool but he doesn't have annihilate 4 :p. I think that Ulamog gives a more solid backup plan here.
Idyllic Tutor -> Rings of Brighthearth I didn't have much for enchantments that I really regularly tutored for. Luminarc and Land Tax seem like the only ones I would bother tutoring into. Rings opens me up to tutoring creatures faster and opens up the option of fetchlands which is sweet.
Plains -> Thawing Glaciers this opens me up for a continuous land drop and combined with Rings its really cool. I just wish there were some bounce land options to add to this.
02-15-2013
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite -> Phyrexian Processor norn is cool but I have no way to really tutor her up. Generally speaking, Mirror Entity is a lot more reliable and powerful than norn. But I wanted them in the same situation where as processor can be a good by itself card to draw and its really good with Children of Korlis leading its way in.
Rings of Brighthearth -> Idyllic Tutor I didnt find rings to be all that good as haste was more important. People were a lot less willing to let me sit behind my commander and mana when I had something like rings out as well which was annoying. If I ran some infinite mana stones / fetchlands as well it might stay but I am not so it was really narrow usually making Thousand-Year Elixir out to be the better option. The tutor has a few nice options to run into and I like variety when I can get it.
Tectonic Edge -> Thespian's Stage the new stage has been great for me so far. Other than a few coffers I dont end up needing my land destruction too often in my meta. I do like the versatility of the stage though.
Swords to Plowshares -> Martial Coup Swords hasn't been what I needed in here for a while now due to how defensive it is. Its still great against things like C Sphinx and against combo creatures but mostly everything else I seem to be doing ok against. On the other hand I like how Coup works as normally I dislike wrathing myself but with coup it sets me up with a bunch of tokens as well and I can always use my champion changeling at EOT to cover my commander going into a max mana coup. I really did want another X spawn and it should be nice having a wrath attached to it.
03-21-2013
Gideon Jura -> Karn Liberated I really love Gideon and think he is an amazing planeswalker but sadly he just isn't as great in multiplayer EDH as he was in heads up. Karn has better removal and while I liked the fact that Gideon could animate, its not something I found that useful on average. His taunt into good rebel blockers was fun but Karn just seems to be more reliable.
Thousand-Year Elixir -> Slate of Ancestry this increases my card draw in the deck. Honestly I haven't found myself really ever wishing I could tutor two rebels at a time and its really mana intensive. Its nice for recovery from a wrath but the pseudo haste is about all I was using it for so meh. I like the extra draw that slate adds though.
Faith's Fetters -> Kozilek, Butcher of Truth I decided I wanted to bring up my draw package further and I tend to have a lot of mana in this deck and I can usually lock creatures up fairly effective so I thought Kozilek could be a good asset for this deck. I worry about bringing up the curve so much but in general I can defend myself in the early game with the rebels so having a bit of a higher curve isn't overly concerning.
07-30-2013
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre -> Stoneforge Mystic I have been playing with both eldrazi for a while now and outside of a situation where I get shut out by means of Elesh Norn, I haven't found Ulamog all that useful to me. I end up throwing away big things in opening hands and my card draw isn't that great so I think I am going to scrap him and go where I think I can get more card draw. I am moving a little more draw back into an equipment package so we will see if its enough for him to come back or not. I like the fact that Ulamog gives me an alt wincon but I don't like how high on the curve he is and I think I would get better results from in increase to my draw package.
Idyllic Tutor -> Mobilization I don't have that many targets to pick from to be honest. I had actually moved to this a while back but forgot to mention it here. I just need options to make tokens at instant speed in this deck. I am very focused on big mana too so I have been getting good results from this when I draw it.
Gift of Estates -> Mask of Memory it adds another means of drawing cards. I often go for the 2 mana bird rebel as a backup to targeted spot tuck on my commander and the mask goes well with him to filter my hand a bit. It drops for less and equips for less than SoF&I which I like and I mainly run it for the draw. I tend to have things I am willing to filter out so it digs me better which I like and for a lot less investment.
08-08-2013
Stoneforge Mystic -> Ramosian Captain I drew the stoneforge the other day and it was very underwhelming. I got skullclamp and put it on and never drew any cards with it. I still like the clamp but its still situational in when I want it. In the case where I got the mystic, a red player had an active Valakut that was just keeping me like completely off the board at the time. I have been tucked a few times of late which has been sort of surprising to me so the ability to tutor into another rebel has been put into question a few times due to this. I realized that I really only run a handful of tutoring rebels so I figured it might need to go up by one. I really like the toolbox of other rebels I have so unfortunately it looks like I need to expand my rebel package to be safer on being tucked. The Captain is essentially just the next cheapest rebel with the lowest costing rebel tutor that I wasn't already running. As a creature, its not great... but its another tutor effect for when I get myself into a jam.
Mask of Memory -> Distorting Lens I haven't had many situations where I have been able to use the mask yet. To be honest, I think the bird is about the only rebel I would really consider putting the mask on. In the end I think its a little narrow. I like the effect that the Lens could give me to nuke other colored creatures. Green has been sort of a thorn in my side of late and so I like the idea of just surprise nuking some of their valuable creatures with this.
Relic of Progenitus -> Stonecloaker outside of drawing a card with the relic, I don't want to hit my own things. I like the cloaker here because I am already playing a draw go deck. I like responding to people who think their cool rez spells are going to work and crush their dreams.
Martial Coup -> Terminus I have noticed on several occasions that tuck wraths can be utilized fairly well in this deck. I still have the option of casting this when my commander isn't out or trying to champion her the turn leading into it. Generally speaking though the times in which I want to wrath are most often when I cant stick my commander. I have had several cases as well where miracle cards have been incredibly useful to me too as I have some topdeck manipulation that also give me the option to draw things when I want.
Maze of Ith -> Prismatic Strands maze is focusing on single attackers which I tend to have really good defense against already. Instead I think I will free up a slot and take some overrun defense which I tend to have more of a hard time dealing with. It also protects me from some of the big red burns spells that might hit all my creatures and or myself. I like that it has flashback which means two uses of it.
Terrain Generator -> Buried Ruin It surprised me when I noticed that I don't run the ruin in here considering how many artifacts I run. I think its a better card for my land slot than the generator. I don't really have the draw output to keep the generator going all that well and if I am riding land tax then I run the risk of pushing myself out of land tax range.
Thawing Glaciers -> Winding Canyons I just haven't been blown away by the glaciers. Having to always tap land and have it come in tapped has been sort of odd. I like the idea of Canyons jumping my commander back in after a wrath as there have been several times of late that I have a hard time re-establishing after being pushed off the board.
Plains -> Tower of the Magistrate I like telling people not to pick up boots and fun artifacts. They don't need those things. Especially that godo...
09-24-2013
Teferi's Puzzle Box -> Elspeth, Sun's Champion I LOVE puzzle box. That being said, there are too many value decks in my meta and they know to just blow their hands up as big as they can and float around doing just one or two big things while continuing to blow their hands up huge. I dont like watching someone with no max handsize and 15 cards just roll from big hand to big hand... I love the effect and I have had some good results but I have also had bad results from it. Its just too random as to how it will pan out for me overall. It screws with some combos but my meta doesn't really play much for traditional combo so usually its value generation decks that just abuse it against me. I am not here to play hug. Like I mentioned earlier, elspeth does like everything I want her to do in this deck.
Plains -> Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx going to see how hitting another basic out of the list goes. I have felt like I could add more utility lands to the list for a while but hadnt had any in specific I wanted. Lets try this and see how it goes.
10-23-2013
Prismatic Strands -> Unexpectedly Absent I always want to make fog effects work even knowing that they just sort of wont. I guess swapping it out for a tuck any permanent is a decent swap.
Knight of the White Orchid -> Surveyor's Scope going to try moving my ramp around and see how it goes. I couldn't really consistently run the Knight in here on time as generally speaking you have to lead it on turn 3 and that's when I play my commander. I will see if I can swap the scope in and see if it goes anywhere. It also leaves me with one less bad synergy card with Torpor Orb.
10-30-2013
Ghostway -> Trading Post: Ghostway is sort of a relic of past builds to be honest. I didn't really connect the dots until recently but its more for a swarm the board with rebels style of build. I also realized that Trading Post offered me a lot of utility and multi use functionality to this deck. I occasionally get rebels in hand that I want in the deck. Utilizing Trading Post I can discard them for life and tuck them with Lin Sivvi at instant speed rather than being forced to keep them in hand or cast them out. I can use Trading Post to provide additional tokens to the board for chump blocking or slow building in a way that doesn't commit me to the board with my rebels. The sacrifice to recover an artifact looks very useful as well because I run some artifacts I really like having access to and the ability to pick up recovery in a multi function utility card like this is great.
Darksteel Ingot -> Mind Stone: I realized that I dont like three mana stones because that's when I want to drop Lin Sivvi so I need to look at dropping before or after that for the most part. I like Mind Stone in a mono color deck because the colored mana is probably a lot less necessary. The option to sacrifice for a draw is useful in the case of a sweeper and or just in a pinch to dig for another card. The single card draw can also be useful with some of the miracle cards that I pack as this gives me an option to have that instant speed draw if I had set something up with a topdeck manipulator that cant draw for me.
Mobilization -> Crystal Ball: of my token producers, moblization is one of the less good ones I have access to. I have often found topdeck manipulation to be a very strong element in this deck with so many shuffling options. With all of the shuffle, I think the ball will be less potent in all but it will also help me to just draw into the sort of things I want to be drawing. Its hard to reliably have my topdeck manipulation so its easier to add another one since tutors are really hard to come by in mono white.
03-18-2014
Elspeth, Knight-Errant -> Orochi Hatchery elspeth 1.0 was too hard to stick to the board and her token production was too slow rolling. People also over react to the fact that it COULD ult and smash it like the turn it drops which is aggravating. I never really cared for her second ability either so it left me with mostly just the one token a turn and see if she makes it to ult plan. I think the Hatchery should pan out better for me. I considered it being Mobilization instead but I got to thinking about when I liked seeing Mobilization and it tends to be later in the game and at that point in time there seems to be a lot more value potential behind the hatchery which can produce larger numbers of tokens for a fixed cost. Elspeth just seemed to be a bigger target than defending her was worth.
Staff of Nin -> Druidic Satchel Satchel has the option to ramp me and with all of the topdeck manipulation I have been pushing in my list it seems like I could have some fun manipulating my topdeck to pull the lands off. I dont mind tokens either so it seems like a fairly decent effect in most cases. The lifegain is probably the worst of its options but with my topdeck manipulation I could manage to control it which seems like fun.
04-02-2014
Orochi Hatchery -> Aven Riftwatcher I might be short changing any testing with the Hatchery but right now I just want to get the riftwatcher in for some gameplay. I might have to circle back later to try to test it. Its a good card as I have proved in other token decks but I really haven't gotten it any face time here.
07-30-2014
Druidic Satchel -> Hushwing Gryff the satchel was interesting assuming I had a topdeck manipulator but to be honest most of the time if I wasn't using it to get free lands into play it was underwhelming. It was too reliant on topdeck manipulators to be ok and if I already have a topdeck manipulator I tend to be happy anyways so meh. More Torpor Orb effects and this one is a flash creature which is great.
Phyrexian Processor -> Spirit Bonds I think the processor is cool but too often it has been incredibly clunky in hand. The mana and setup to double my life is just way too intensive and difficult to pull off and while the big tokens are nice, I want to go away from it for a while just due to how often I have felt like its not been what I want in my hand. The bonds gives me some nice token production and protection for my key creatures which are all welcome.
Elspeth Tirel -> Rule of Law I just continue to have a hard time with the elspeths other than sun's champ. I constantly have to evaluate if I can get away with dropping them into play and the answer is usually that I cannot. I want to spend some time with some of these one spell cast per turn sort of things as I think they hurt decks that draw all the cards fairly well with minimal impact to my own list. It is one of those sort of cards that's hard to evaluate because the people it slows down are the people who are doing all the drawing and answering generally speaking so we will give it a test run and see what it can do.
1-22-2015
Surveyor's Scope -> Heliod, God of the Sun overall my issue is generally speaking getting the bodies to be able to attack. The scope has been sort of a varying value sort of ramp card. I have in the past been in games where it fetches me 4 lands into play but at the same time I have been in games where it is a dead card. Heliod's mass vigilance can be useful but even more useful is just sort of how robust he is which means I usually have him after he is cast. There is a large bit of issue with this deck against mass sweeper cards.
Trading Post -> Mobilization I like the versatility of the post but at the same time I have been needing to increase my ability to create tokens repeatedly. I have a lot of situations in the mid to late game where I just sit around waiting to be able to make tokens somehow.
2-03-2015
Wayfarer's Bauble -> Mask of Memory while the bauble is ramp, what I need more than that is a consistent card draw effect. I recently cut Trading Post which did offer as a discard outlet but I think the mask could serve a very similar and useful role. I need draw more than I do ramp in a deck like this. The question offhand goes back to how much of a challenge I have keeping things on the board.
Luminarch Ascension -> Steelshaper's Gift honestly... I would say something like 90% of the time I cant get the Ascension online and running in a way that ends the game. Unfortunately it takes so much setup time that my opponents often deal with it by the time it would go online. I have added more token production to the list of late and I think it makes Luminarch less important as a whole. Generally speaking I am looking for quantity of tokens anyways since Mirror Entity is often used as the pump source.
Mind Stone -> Bazaar of Baghdad one mana ramp isn't as significant overall to the deck. I decided to pick up a copy of the Bazaar of late because it should be amazing in my Daretti and Toshiro decks as well but I didn't think about its impact in rebels until more recently. It would give me the option of cycling out rebels that come to hand and the interaction with something like Land Tax is quite impressive to think about. For the moment I will probably just have one copy that I will hotswap or proxy between the lists but if it performs well here it might mean I might need to buy a second copy to have altered (Gals will cry as he destroys it lol). For now.... I am just going to move to testing it here and if it pays off in the long run I will consider the second copy / alter but not right now.
3-2-2015
Plains -> Thawing Glaciers it sacrifices speed for card advantage and consistent land drops. This deck tends to struggle with card advantage at times and it needs to always be hitting its land drops. This seems to be a fairly ideal deck to add glaciers to as it generally isn't explosive out of the gates and it needs assistance with card advantage and a means to hit all of its land drops.
Plains -> Myriad Landscape it gives me some ramp option without taking up a spot in deck. It unfortunately does accelerate my land count which can interfere with Land Tax, Tithe, and Weathered Wayfarer but I think it is worth doing as I control when to utilize it. I guess I don't really know why I didn't make this change sooner as it seems like one of those cards I have been running a lot more of late.
Spirit Bonds -> Rings of Brighthearth For whatever reason I probably didn't give enough credit earlier to what all interacts with rings in this deck. I did a bit of looking and it seems to be more cards than I had originally thought. The idea of cracking a Children of Korlis or Lawbringer with the ability to copy them seems like fun. In the long run I should probably consider putting fetchlands in to support the rings as well but at that point I would feel like I need to possibly add Crucible of Worlds too so its sort of a rabbit hole of cards I am going to hold off on for the moment. Spirit Bonds has been a little bit awkward between the dropping it, needing rebels set up, tutoring for more rebels and paying mana for tokens all in one shot so its been slower I guess than what I had been hoping for. Torpor Orb effects also turn the spirit bonds off so in all its been sort of more awkward than I had anticipated.
3-16-2015
Entreat the Angels -> Secure the Wastes Entreat is awkward due to being sorcery speed. You can Miracle it but it requires a LOT of setup to execute that well. Without the instant speed miracle, I have mostly been unimpressed by it. We mostly just need bodies when we want them than trying to awkwardly juggle an effect like this. I have had times where I have put Entreat to amazing results but far more often that I struggle with it.
3/30/2015 (The following changes followed the change to tuck which this deck required less redundancy in tutoring rebels afterwards)
Amrou Scout -> Basilisk Collar the changes to tuck have hurt the need to have so many tutoring rebels in deck. The collar is a support card to Zealot il-Vec coming into the list as it gives cheap repeatable removal against any creature.
Ramosian Captain -> Zealot il-Vec same reason for cutting as above. The zealot gives an evasive creature to carry equipment.
Banishing Stroke -> Sun Titan with tuck getting hurt I feel like this tuck effect in particular is harder to justify keeping. I think a lot of my tuck effects need to be reassessed but in the meantime this is definately the most questionable of the bunch. With bringing in Basilisk Collar I feel like I am bringing in a replacement kill effect. Sun Titan gives good value at a lot of stages. I like a lot of the targets now more than I had in the past. I have more things that aren't just mana stones for it to target now than I did in the past.
7/6/2015
Sword of Feast and Famine -> Sword of the Animist with F&F I get into maze issues which so far I have not really been able to cast and be happy with the it. This new sword gives me lands on attack which is a much better trigger time. I also tend to have evasive guys I can send out and I like the trigger off this new sword a lot more than the old one for this deck. F&F trigger really only mattered if I had one of my few enchantments where I can pay mana for guys in play where as the Animist should matter a lot more over time.
Basilisk Collar -> Stoneforge Mystic people have overreacted to this one sort of like I expected. My main targets tend to be draw and or ramp anyways and with the addition of the new sword I think I would rather another tutor and get the three equipment I will have more often than having a bigger diversity of targets. It is sort of a bad interaction with the Torpor Orb effects but this is mono white so its not like I can all that reliably get and or stick them.
Hallowed Burial -> Tragic Arrogance it gives a more versatile removal option that also wont kill my commander. I am interested enough to bring it in. I run enough topdeck manipulation that the Miracle on Terminus is interesting to me still. I cant speak for Tragic Arrogance personally but it seems like it could very easily end up working for us since this deck can so easily lock up a single creature threat so it forces a lot of decks to go with multiple bodies to attack us rather than a single one.
Stonecloaker -> Hallowed Moonlight just moving spot removal for spot removal. I like Stonecloaker still but considering they are for sort of the same thing I dont mind swapping them. Hallowed Moonlight can hit a lot more effects and cantrips me where as the cloaker can be used multiple times but costs a lot to cycle repeatedly.
The Alters
Rebels
Non Rebel Creatures
Artifacts
LAND
BASICS
NON-BASICS
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, thank you everyone who has contributed to this thread. The best ideas tend to come from a group effort so thank you to anyone who has contributed to this thread as I appreciate it. All discussion is useful in some shape or another.
Galspanic altered all of the cards that are found in here. My thanks to him and his hard work.
Sioux created a great banner which I used for a long time. I am no longer utilizing it due in part to not running one of the cards on it as well as just trying to show all of my alters instead. Regardless, kudos to him and his work.
You have a good point. I played a few test games in 1v1 and there were some fun times to be had. I think I need to trim my rebel package a bit though as there were some I never wanted.
Also.. I need to work on some of my non rebel things. I should probably pick up another 2-3 art/enchant removal as well as another piece of equipment. Eternal Dragon wasn't impressive either so it might turn into like a Coat of Arms or something...
Ghostway might also be worth investing in in here. I also considered Eldrazi Monument briefly and I think it could be solid as well. I will get back to the list later. I have to clean for now as my Mother in law is coming for a visit... joy...
Lin Sivvi is an absolute beating. I would rather play against Thrax any day.
My thrax is combo heavy playout. This deck is not really using combo unless you want to call Mirror Entity mass pump a combo.
Some changes to the list:
CUTS:
- Ramosian Captain it is essentially one of the more expensive of the rebel tutor creatures. The 2/2 first strike body doesnt really make up for the expensive use tutor. I want either a decent creature or a decently costed tutor and this is sort of a bad bastardization of the two.
- Ramosian Revivalist since the commander of the deck can tuck the rebels and then I can re tutor them I just havent found this needed so far. I could be wrong but I just dont see this working so great so far for me.
-Eternal Dragon not impressed at all. I dont know what I was hoping for when I added him but he wasnt fun to draw and I have better things to do than recur him. If I had a deck with less things to do I could possibly see using him but I always have something to be doing in this deck.
- Jhovall Queen She was... ehhh ok I wasnt real impressed but with the playtesting where I did tutor her up I had wished I had tutored into Cho-Arrim Bruiser instead. Tapping things down is solid when it comes to connecting with swrods and what not. I think I will try him out instead.
- Rout I found that I sort of swarm the board a lot. The only time I would really feel I need a wrath it seems so far is against a token deck. Generally speaking though I have the capability to out creature other people with rebels. I will try running a wrath less for now and see how it goes.
- Sundering Titan I just wasnt really impressed... he is ok but not really what I wanted when I drew him. I would rather something that might end the game at that cost in this deck and I just didnt get that vibe off of him in this list. Also I have relatively no ways to really abuse him to the point of making him good in here.
- Karmic Guide I have this feeling that this deck isnt going to be as much about rezing a big fatty back into play. I dont have much for ways to abuse the Guide either. As much as I love this card in so many decks I didnt get the vibe that it belonged in here. If I ever dropped it in to rez a rebel it would probably be a bad move so meh.
ADDS:
+ Sun Titan additional rez outlet. He can rez a lot of the rebels which is really nice as well as most of the equipment too. He is a great beater to top it off so he seems like a great add to me. + Rings of Brighthearth I didnt think about it at first but paying 2 additional to get a second activation out of the rebels seems worth trying out at least. It is a good card.
+ Cho-Arrim Bruiser I want to try him in the place of the queen. I might end up just not worrying about having a big beater rebel but he seems like he could be incredibly good with some of the swords and what not. The fact that he gets to tap down 2 creatures on attacking could be great for connecting for some damage.
+ Knight of the White Orchid I realized when I was on my way out last night that I didnt have him in my list so I put him in my list on my way out. He is solid.
+ Solemn Simulacrum how did this not make my list.... odd well fixed.
+ Return to Dust good versatile removal. It can pick up 2 targets which is great or I can instant cast it in a pinch.
+ Enlightened Tutor I considered a few options for this last add. I think this gives me a good versatile option. I considered either ramp or art / enchant removal but this sort of gives me the option of either.
I was tempted to put some flashy effects in however I think I need to work on the basics for now and with more game play I will figure out how my needs need to change what I am running.
EDIT: ehhhh it suddenly occurs to me that my original list didnt have Sundering Titan and I just sort of randomly included him... well I might have to work some kinks out on this edit...
EDIT 2: well I cut rings back out... it might be a little bit winmore...
EDIT 3: ehhhh I am off by 1 card again... I think I might just throw a Wayfarer's Bauble in for now. I need more ramp anyways.
if you want more ramp and extra equips run an explorer's scope. good by itself, nutz with top. plus pulling creatures with rebels tends to leave land on top of your library as your land ratio changes. scope is good to help insure you draw gas.
if you want more ramp and extra equips run an explorer's scope. good by itself, nutz with top. plus pulling creatures with rebels tends to leave land on top of your library as your land ratio changes. scope is good to help insure you draw gas.
explorer's scope ehhhh I havent ever been a huge fan of it... in my opinion it is usually just a worse sword effect as the value is questionable.
quietus spike it might be worth playing... I was a bit less certain earlier but there are a few decent evasive creatures I have access to. The deathtouch is always useful as well on these little creatures.
distorting lens ehhh... I am not going to worry about it too much. I see a lot of 3 color commanders in my meta though and the 2 exile guys catch a lot of them which I really like. I will probably just let them pick up the value that they can and not worry about further things.
pariah/pariah's shield purely defensive lock. I dont like that. These sort of things fall apart at the worst times.
The spike is probably the most likely of the bunch that I might run. I was also considering Strata Scythe but who knows...
I'm thinking about finally making a deck with white in it. I was either thinking of using this general or maybe w/x. So in your opinion is the general any good? You mentioned this is for your casual friends, which I can relate to. I actually built a zombie deck for that same reason. Can this be a relatively strong deck if built towards that end?
I'm thinking about finally making a deck with white in it. I was either thinking of using this general or maybe w/x. So in your opinion is the general any good? You mentioned this is for your casual friends, which I can relate to. I actually built a zombie deck for that same reason. Can this be a relatively strong deck if built towards that end?
I really like her so far in my testing but I only managed like three 1v1 games so far. I think you could go a ways with her and I really love the sort of draw / go style of control she lends but I don't really know as of right now how competitive she could become. I would say one thing though. Just because she has a few combo options available doesn't mean that you should include them. I know someone before me who ran her and ran the infinite life combo. Whenever he executed it he died first thing after it. People get really pissed off by it and it doesn't win the game so I would honestly say it isn't worth doing.
The biggest issue I see with rebels so far is they tend to require a lot of bodies to really do much. It is tricky not to overextend them because people will probably be wrathing you. I need more gameplay time though before I can comment much more though. One of the biggest percs though is that rebels can tutor into each other so getting tucked which is one of the hardest things for mono white is minimized significantly.
Since you're playing aggro, Armageddon and friends are nice. (Not very casual though ._.)
I feel like the Cartographer is a bit slow to be honest. At 4 mana I feel like I should be recieving more than a single mana.
As for the geddon... I would probably go with Catastrophe between the options but even then the rebels really need a manabase to multiply so it can be hard to blow everything up.
Amrou Seekers is a decent card. But my question is when would you rather have it than Zealot il-Vec? Intimidate is generally speaking much worse than shadow. So the big difference here is the 2/2 body instead of a 1/1 body. In my opinion the Zealot just sort of one ups him in too many ways though especially with the option to redirect damage to a creature which is good versatility. In my mind it just comes down to the fact that if I want something to swing with equipment the Zealot just feels better in most situations. I dont find that I need a designated beater that often so I would rarely need both in play at the same time. With more playtesting it could be added but mainly if I have problems with someone using premium removal on the Zealot that exiles him.
Children of Korlis I don't see a lot of big non lethal non general damage in my meta. If you were to see a lot of that situation I could see it being good however it does nothing to commander damage, and unless it is some large non lethal force I just don't see much result using this. I suppose there is a chance you might like to use it turn after turn to turn back 20 or so power worth of guys but I just cant think of a lot of situations which this would work for me. I might need to playtest him at some point but I feel like Rebels are already very defensive in nature.
Alas, you're building a color I have experience with.
Bound in Silence is strictly worse than Prison Term aside from maybe the double white I suppose.
I think that both Nim Deathmantle and Sword of Feast and Famine are underwhelming here. Deathmantle is far too susceptible to all sorts of removal and mandates that you leave the 4 mana untapped. Which wouldn't be too bad later on considering there aren't many mana sinks in mono white, but it just seems bleh.
Sword is nice to connect, untap, and dump your mana into winding canyons, but at that point you're just encouraging yourself to overextend.
I've always liked Steel Hellkite in Mono W as a win con, or a one sided removal.
This is also a deck that's begging for Elesh Norn, however I'm sure you've thought of that already.
Finally mono white control can only really make up for its lack of card advantage by use of wraths. Hallowed burial is amazing as you pointed out is amazing. Austere command is much the same. I don't however see what the point is for most of the rebels that also tutor for additional rebels. Since they also have to tap, it's not like you can attack and then pull out another creature from your deck. I've never run Lin-Sivvi, but I think you need to up the mass removal count by at least three or four.
There's just no way to stop the big threats that you need to stop while using such little mass and targeted removal. Since your creatures don't do much controlling either I can just see your little rebels staring at the opposing army's with no hope.
The deck has few ways of protecting itself and few ways of really rushing damage down opponents throats. I think one of these two things needs to really be addressed.
I'll jump in and speak for ISB about bound in silence. Being a rebel card, its tutorable by your general and half of your rebels. It can wreck opponents by being put into play from your library. It's virtually uncounterable and it can hit creatures with shroud and hexprof coming into play this way.THEN add in the recurrability with the general..... This makes it strictly better than prison term in a rebel deck.
I'll jump in and speak for ISB about bound in silence. Being a rebel card, its tutorable by your general and half of your rebels. It can wreck opponents by being put into play from your library. It's virtually uncounterable and it can hit creatures with shroud and hexprof coming into play this way.THEN add in the recurrability with the general..... This makes it strictly better than prison term in a rebel deck.
I actually didn't notice that it was a tribal enchantment. Good looking out
Alas, you're building a color I have experience with.
Bound in Silence is strictly worse than Prison Term aside from maybe the double white I suppose.
I think that both Nim Deathmantle and Sword of Feast and Famine are underwhelming here. Deathmantle is far too susceptible to all sorts of removal and mandates that you leave the 4 mana untapped. Which wouldn't be too bad later on considering there aren't many mana sinks in mono white, but it just seems bleh.
Sword is nice to connect, untap, and dump your mana into winding canyons, but at that point you're just encouraging yourself to overextend.
I've always liked Steel Hellkite in Mono W as a win con, or a one sided removal.
This is also a deck that's begging for Elesh Norn, however I'm sure you've thought of that already.
Finally mono white control can only really make up for its lack of card advantage by use of wraths. Hallowed burial is amazing as you pointed out is amazing. Austere command is much the same. I don't however see what the point is for most of the rebels that also tutor for additional rebels. Since they also have to tap, it's not like you can attack and then pull out another creature from your deck. I've never run Lin-Sivvi, but I think you need to up the mass removal count by at least three or four.
There's just no way to stop the big threats that you need to stop while using such little mass and targeted removal. Since your creatures don't do much controlling either I can just see your little rebels staring at the opposing army's with no hope.
The deck has few ways of protecting itself and few ways of really rushing damage down opponents throats. I think one of these two things needs to really be addressed.
This deck is quite a bit different from the usual mono white decks in the fact that it relies on a bunch of terrible dudes to sort of just random swing in FTW.
Bound in Silence as Ash pointed out it is a rebel card which is tutorable and recurrable. It is one of the best points of removal that this commander has.
Nim Deathmantle I havent had enough time to test it but this deck sort of plays draw / go style. The upside of this card is that it can be used to sort of psudo mass rez my rebels as I can trigger it for each creature that dies. I should easily be able to rez like 2 guys off of this.
Sword of Feast and Famine I have TONS of mana dumps in this deck. I can swing in and when the trigger goes on the stack tutor into a few guys then untap and get ready to tutor into more guys. This bugger is nice
Steel Hellkite it is an option but as far as wincons go I think I am better off with either a mass buff or an equipment. He is alright but I think in this deck I would have to consider him almost strictly removal. His pump isnt so great for this deck.
Elesh Norn considered it... I think Coat of Arms / Eldrazi Monument will be better for this deck though. I dont have much for ways to tutor into any of them however Elesh is sort of a smaller buff and removal spell that I like more in creature abuse types of decks.
wrath effects: great effects however this deck sort of relies on just multiplying every turn. I found that it is very defensive in nature with a lot of great tutor targets in the rebel toolbox. I need more testing before I can really solidify this but I find it hard to expect that much other than a token swarm deck is going to out body me.
As for defending itself... so far I havent had any problems with that. I have a lot of great defensive stuff. I have some guys to exile creatures outright, I have creatures that have psudo deathtouch, ones that turn damage back on creatures, I have creatures who take no damage and I have just bodies for days to block with. If anything this deck defends itself nicely. My problems currently are killing people and wrath effects against me.
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Some of the more powerful token makers could be good, since your general searches out Mirror Entity. Martial Coup seems too powerful not to play anyways.
edit: Hm, I guess you are already playing a few of them.
Some of the more powerful token makers could be good, since your general searches out Mirror Entity. Martial Coup seems too powerful not to play anyways.
edit: Hm, I guess you are already playing a few of them.
This deck is meant to be for multiplayer. It just so happened that last Friday was a draft (which I hate...) so instead I played some side games against a buddy of mine who needs some EDH practice. He is primarily accustomed to 1v1 games of magic so I used my untested new deck against his. Generally speaking though no I dont do 1v1 games. This is probably the first one I have done in like 6 months or so.
I agree that token makers can be decent in this deck. I am currently running White Sun's Zenith and Decree of Justice both of which I like because of their instant speed. This sort of deck playes a bit of draw/go so I really like the versatility of just hitting an army of guys into play when I need it. That being said I am not so keen no the sorcery speed equivalents as they lack the surprise factor. Martial Coup is a great card but so far I have been trying to wrath a little less in this deck due to the tendency for rebels to sort of multiply over time. Mirror Entity really is a great finisher but I have also been trying to experiment with some alternate wincons mostly through equipment currently.
I came up with a few more changes for tonights games which will hopefully work out for me.
Batterskull -> Quietus Spike I really like batterskull due to the fact that it can easily make creatures titan sized. The vigilance is amazing on rebels as well giving me the option to attack + block + totor with the creature all in one. That being said though it is expensive to move arround and I dont really see it having a huge game winning approach to it. The spike will do a lot more for ending games and deathtouch is still solid on defense.
Crovax, Ascendant Hero -> Eldrazi Monument Once I get going I can easily pick up 2-3 creatures in a turn with the rebels so sacing one a turn to the monument should be relatively minimal. I doubt I can rely on the monument sticking long however it is great until it goes. I figure it is worth trying out. Chrovax just has such a small impact. I love how I can bounce him but he doesnt kick in hard enough in my opinion.
Nim Deathmantle -> Strata Scythe giving up survivability for raw power. We will see how it does but for now I feel like I need a way to actually accomplish something which the Scythe does nicely.
Scout's Warning -> Ghostway Scout's Warning is just sort of ok outside of flashing in my commander when resetting. Ghostway on the other hand gives me a wrath resistance which is greatly needed.
Remember the Fallen -> Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite I was hoping that Remember the Fallen would be a decent way to get artifacts back to hand but I just feel like it is probably better to keep moving. The card seems to sit dead in my hand for quite a bit of the time. Also it doesnt really help much with reusing rebels due to the fact that I can just tuck and re tutor them. Elesh Norn gives me another possible wincon as well as some control against opposing agro / token.
EDIT: also... I am not sure if that Eldrazi Monument should actually be Coat of Arms or not... I might have to think it over a bit more...
So I ended up playing a few games on Tuesday night and it ended up using like all of my decks once. I went into this game assuming I was going to loose as my opponents were just playing better decks. My opposition in order of who I thought would win: Scion of the Ur-Dragon, Hazezon Tamar, and Nath of the Gilt-Leaf
So to get started I sort of have a slow game from the start. I have 4 lands in my opening hand and several responsive spells. I topdeck a Lightning Greaves on turn 2 which I drop in and drop my commander on turn 3. I spend the next several turns playing draw / go just putting a few guys into play. Hazezon hits a T&N into Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite + Primeval Titan which blows my board out. He decides from there to swing at me with a few tokens he has laying about because all I have left is my 0/1 commander in play. I Oblation his Elesh Norn as I wont be crawling out of the current situation with her in play and chump off a token that dies.
From here Scion slams a Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker stealing the Primetime and putting greaves on it to swing out. Next turn he purposely swings it into a deathtoucher so nobody would homeward path it.
We are all focusing on killing bolas at this point. Nath manages to swing decently at him which would have taken 5 loyalty off of him but Scion answers one of his threats and only takes a point off of bolas. At the EOT for Nath I tutor into Changeling Hero championing a 1/1 rebel. On my turn I drop a Whipkeeper from my hand and slap the greaves onto him and tap down the only blocker for Scion. From here I swing the last 5 damage into bolas and kill him. Hazezon takes the opportunity to kill Liliana on his turn with Scion's shields down.
Now is when it got stupid... Scion had tutored with liliana into Rite of Replication which he kicks onto a Vigor... stupid. We all spend a turn just sort of getting ready to get blown the hell up. Scion swings them into Nath who has the most wraths between us. Nath cant defend himself from dying so he sort of screws with us by mass blocking and putting a ton of counters on them...
Scion ends his turn and EOT I tutor for Bound in Silence and lockdown the only blocker Scion has left... it seems like he keeps giving me the opportunity to do this... on my turn I finally topdeck my 6th land.... it is like turn 15 and I finally hit #6... god it was lame. I drop Quietus Spike and equip it to Changeling Hero and swing in at Scion for like 8 or so damage. Then he looses another like 13 to the spike. Hazezon decides that it is in his best interest to capitalize on Scion being low and finishes him off with a few 8/8 Godsire tokens he has left over.
It comes down to just me and Hazazon now. I drop a Sword of Feast and Famine I had been holding for a few turns now and equip it. Like all of Hazazon's creatures are green so he cant block it. I strap it to the changeling and swing in for 6 + half his life which was another 10+ ish damage.
Hazazon mass multiplies as last turn he dropped his commander as well so he has tokens everywhere... Luckily he can only swing at me for like 18 or something. I have gained a lot of life off of the lifelink champion so I am still at like 32 at this point. My turn and I drop Eldrazi Monument and finish the game off.
It was funny as it was a game that I had absolutely no business winning but I just randomly pulled off key moves at the right time to push the game in my favor. It was odd as on turn 15+ when the game ended I was at 6 lands with no mana stones... That might have to be looked into but who knows...
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Alright, well first of all I got 2 more games in with the rebels last night. I wasn't worried as much about bringing this out against a little more competative of decks as I was the first time arround. I have just seen that obviously I have to sort of swarm when I can and not super overextend between wraths.
GAME 1: 5 player game where opponents going arround the table starting to my left are: Hazezon Tamar, Nin, the Pain Artist, Scion of the Ur-Dragon, and Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. Hazezon is playing token swarm where he often drops haste + huge buff when his tokens come in to completely smash a few players. Nin is playing sort of a broken combo deck in the fact that he hates infinites so he does strange things to try to Ignite Memories for a ton of copies without ever doing anything infinitely in there. Scion tends to 1-2 shot people and his utility is brutal. He is mostly playing just 5c goodstuff though with too high of manacurve on most of his stuff though. And Teferi is well playing a deck mostly just constructed from the top 50 cards page...
We get going to this game, Scion drops a turn 1 Sol Ring, Turn 2 Skyshroud Claim, Turn 3 Gilded Lotus, Turn 4 Scion with lolz mana everywhere. Luckily for us Teferi Hinders Scion coming into play lol so he goes for the slow track instead.
I get going sort of slow and totally play mistake the **** out of my deck. I get a simulacrum out on turn 4 rather than rebel tutoring but then turn 5 I forget to rebel tutor or activate my Wayfarer's Bauble so I look like a dumbass. I then end up tutoring up and using Lawbringer to stop Nin from shooting Stuffy Doll for tons of damage instead of using Zealot il-Vec like a smart player... bahhhh bad plays!
Anyways the game went on for a while and I managed to save my commander from an All is Dust by using my changeling to cover for her. I then used the mana I had left to tuck him when she came back into play which was nice. A few more turns went past and Scion swing a ton of dudes in at Hazezon and I used that opportunity to acitvate Winding Canyons and spit out Mirror Entity and another dude from my hand. From here I slapped Scion for 40 using **** creatures and the Entity.
Hazezon didnt really like me doing this so he followed this up and killed my entity (just to the gy so it was ok). Next turn I dropped a Marshal's Anthem kicked once to rez the entity and hit hazezon for another like 10 or 15 damage putting him at 6. He dropped his hand into play for blockers but was still 2 shy of being able to block me so I still on the following turn swing at him with tons of dudes killing him.
At this point nin had about ohhhh 30 or 40 cards in hand... I knew I was dead but I was just doing what I could before dying. Nin went off throwing 13 copies of Ignite Memories at me which hit my lark in hand a lot of times... killing me on the spot. I was amused when Teferi revealed his hand to be 2 lands and skullclamp for his 13 copies... I think he took like 4 damage.
At this point Teferi just sort of scooped because he was trying to work out a trade mid game and people were getting annoyed.
GAME 2: Same players - Teferi player who went off to trade and such. Nin swapped to Mayael the Anima and Scion to Rhys the Redeemed.
This game just started off sort of slow for me unfortunately. Rhys dropped into play on turn 2, Turn 3 he dropped Elvish Archdruid, Turn 4 he dropped Seedborn Muse. Turn 6 I think we all died when he just dropped Elesh Norn into play with like 35 dudes.... Unfortunately we were just all too agro based with too few answers in that setup. I moved to thrax after this game and pissed everyone off when I combod out to punish them all lol.
The games were a lot of fun and sort of showed me some things need to change.
CUTS: Cho-Manno, Revolutionary too slow and everyone has evasion on fricking everything. I never tutor him and he is almost never used here. People dont use non evasive attackers that dont swarm. It generally has evasion or is swarming.
Duplicant mehhhhhh I have some instant speed things to do essentially this. I dont need a creature at sorcery speed when I can just threaten to do this. I would rather have an instant speed option if possible.
Lightning Greaves I never needed these. My rebels chain together so tucking isnt that big of a problem. Also I tend to be tapped out off of casting my commander so meh.
Eldrazi Monument -> Darksteel Plate I just have a hard time really using the Monument in here. It was good on paper but it sits in my hand a lot. I would rather just play the plate and have a hard to remove guy I can block with.
ADDS: Mind Stone I need more fast early mana stones. This gets me some mana to move arround with in the early game and I like how it can cycle off. This deck plays a lot of draw / go so I should be able to pop it off for a card in a sweeper.
Relic of Progenitus Some basic graveyard hate. I can tuck my rebels before blowing this which is nice. I probably will need more than this in here but I like how it cycles itself which is nice. For now I will start light but Stonecloaker might be soon after here.
Umezawa's Jitte it lends a bit more utility removal which is nice. I have been wanting something I can manipulate for some multi kills decently and I think this will to some point help against some swarm style of decks. It also gives some lifegain options which can be ok.
EDIT: Ohhh and I filled in my landbase finally. I have a few tweeks probably to do to it yet but it isn't just sort of a gaping hole anymore.
I could include more combos... but I have problems with all of mono white's combos. Most of them utilize cards that are just terrible for mono white outside of the narrow combo. Infinite life combo honesly really just gets you killed first from my own experience. I remember several games where someone gained infinite life with rebels then got smashed into the ground by opposing commanders. Not once have I ever seen someone win after hitting infinite life.
My own current list is trying to be a bit more agro / toolbox utility based. Unfortunately most of the rebels are really underwhelming from a power perspective so I am forced to use most of them as toolbox utility as well as bodies for Mirror Entity / equipment. While I am not completely against combos I find that most of them are using sort of bad cards in mono white. I don't like cards that outside of the combo are mostly dead which is why I don't really bother much with them in here.
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do you think karmic guide is not so usefull?
in my play group i have only win one time with the Felidar Sovereign but every time i can get infinite life ,as most of opponent take care about the felidar or are running infinite damage/mill/ instant win condition (ex:Laboratory Maniac), they don't care about it.
Half the time i kill all the board , i just get one of the 2 deadly sac outlet or the auriok salvagers / lion's eye diamond combo.
And these last 4 cards are not even useless alone.
Karmic Guide is an amazing creature, I just dont like it as much in this list. If I pay 5 mana to recover a rebel at sorcery speed generally speaking that was sort of a meh play. I love it in my Bant list but in here it is a lot less impressive. If I can rez a nice big non rebel it is really cool but I don't run that many big non rebel creatures in here.
While running the combos is a viable option I really don't like how most of the combo pieces work on their own. I have had a fun time running it as somewhat of a utility control based agro deck. Not saying that I refuse to run some combo but as of now I am not too impressed by the options available.
Just sort of a fast swap I wanted to try out. I was looking at Karn Liberated and he seems like he could be a lot of fun. This deck is already incredibly defensive in nature so I think I could actually put some decent defense up for him. I think I might try swapping him in for Umezawa's Jitte for a bit.
I ended up doing 2 test games last night of 1v1 again... I dont know how it keeps happening that I get these games with this deck but whatever. My opponent after playing 2 games against him I looked at his deck and he was running 35 lands with 3 mana stones with Kaervek the Merciless as his commander... I mostly goldfished the games however I learned game 2 that Grafdigger's Cage is a total nightmare for me. He Demonic Tutored it on turn 2 and slammed it down before I could activate my commander for the first time. Luckily I had Elspeth and Mentor of the Meek so I sort of ran him down using the two of them instead.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Well... I had been proxying several of the rebels yet so I was looking into ordering some of the ones I was missing. I realized that I could foil out all of the rebels for relatively cheap so I dropped probably arround $30.00-$35.00 to foil out literally every rebel card in the deck that I didnt already have.
Luckily for me I already had Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero and Mirror Entity so the rest of them were actually fairly cheap in comparison to pickup. Looking to make some upgrades yet in the list but I have been very happy playing this deck for being a mono white list.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I hear you, I have my rebels all foil too except for lin,cho, and lieutenant. I've been looking for a foil of Blade of the Sixth Pride for my deck. If only for the awesomeness of a full art foil.....he's got to look amazing.....
Target Task force a bunch w/ Outrider, sac to one of those lands, yay.
Also, Endless Horizons was always really kind to me in Lin-Sivvi. I can see being scared of enchantment hate, but even insuring the next three-four land drops is huge.
*NOTICE* - this thread is designed to play a as a defensive toolbox based token swarm deck. If you are looking for a competitive deck to combo out with or play against competitive combo, I would look elsewhere. This deck can play very well but if the end goal is a competitive setting, it will likely not be anywhere near fast enough. The best way to describe this deck is as somewhat of a pillowfort style of token swarm.
Why Play Rebels?
Welcome to the wonderful world of rebels. Rebels are an interesting tribe originally out of Masques block and returned in Time Spiral block and is sprinkled lightly across a few other sets. Rebels and Mercenaries are the two tribes that were ever designed as tutoring based tribes. Mercenaries sadly have no legend to run them as a main focus of a deck though. Rebels are the more popular tribe of the two and have seen print in two different blocks in part due to their popularity. For a quick snipit background on Lin Sivvi herself from our very own wiki:
Lin Sivvi's Pros:
Lin Sivvi's Cons:
Playing Mono White
Alternate Commander Options:
I will try to outline some alternative options if you feel that Lin Sivvi might not fit your needs. Obviously there will be difficulties transitioning my own deck / strategies to a different commander but some elements or feel might be able to transfer. This is just me hypothetically pointing towards other options that "Could" work rather than suggestions for builds. I am just going to hit on similar type of builds though or this will just get too large in general.
Rebel Based
Equipment Based (Mono White)
Token Based (Mono White)
History / Bio
I have always liked toolboxing especially the idea of having a commander who can toolbox themsleves. The problem I tend to have with them though is that they are EXTREMELY BORING and tend to play out similarly each game because most tutoring commanders have specific things they try to assemble in specific orders. Due to the fact that rebels are so defensive in nature, their games tend to play very very differently. I dont have a specific tutor order to go with the rebels and thats sort of what made me really like them initially.
I initially build my rebel deck as sort of an equipment based deck. It would use rebels to connect the equipment and generate some value through that means. It was a fun way to play it but I realized more and more that it lacked much for surprise output. It was sort of linear due to most of the equipment not really having a big punch behind it. I also realized that I was using Mirror Entity a lot as a means to sort of swarm at people but didnt really build the deck to swarm initially. Over time, I started playing the deck more defensively and using more tokens as my means of killing people.
I initially built my rebel deck as the second or third attempt at mono white. One of my biggest background issues with mono white had been its lack of card advantage and how much trouble it gets into when the commander gets tucked. Due to all of this, rebels have sort of stuck with me as one of the better things to do in mono white after playing it for some time.
My name is Brian, I am 27 years old, I am a spike player who loves to win and tweak his lists. I live out in South Dakota sort of in the middle of nowhere. I got into playing EDH back in the summer of 2010. Our playgroup started sort of small and we went on and off on EDH play but eventually it took off and most of us sort of started dying off from other formats and only playing EDH. We get together on Tuesday nights where we often see 4-12 guys together down at the shop and just play 4+ hours of EDH every week. I got to be sort of one of the big shot players in my group where a lot of times people would just swing things at me because that's the player I am regardless of what deck I bring to the table. I try to build decks with the mentality that everyone might be attacking me and I might have to fend off more than one opponent. While I love perfecting my decks, I don't particularly like utilizing combos so if I have a combo in my deck it is usually because it has multi purposes that can be utilized to go infinite if it is drawn in that way. I am a spike player who loves the big plays but I also love building synergy throughout my decks. I try to build my decks with different concepts and feels to them so that I can change decks and have a very different gameplan with each of my decks.
I have played magic since hummm I guess like 1996 or 1997. I have been playing magic since Ice Age but that was when I was in like 4th grade so obviously I was not the player then that I am now. I picked up on playing standard FNM a lot in high school where I played a lot in the Odyssey / Onslaught blocks. I played into Mirrodin then quit when Kokusho started beating everyone up. I am glad he is finally off of the banlist for singleton play as I think its good to have him back in action.
I am back to playing magic again and have been playing standard since Zendikar came out. I go back and forth on my thoughts of Standard but regardless I love playing EDH. I recently stopped playing standard again sometime just before Avacyn Restored was released due to my own personal issues with the direction Wizards is trying to push standard away from control. I still dabble at standard a little bit but I really have a strong dislike for the current direction Wizards is going with standard. Still, I stay strong as a Commander player.
I have built more EDH decks than I can count up anymore. I am quite good at dropping staple cards into a list which is really unfortunate. I keep the number of decks I have constructed to somewhat of a minimum. I don't like replicating how decks feel so I sort of go with colors / strategies I don't already have. I am sort of an aggro / control player who tends to for the most part not focus heavily on combos. I usually tend to be playing 2-3 decks at a time so if I have more decks than that it tends to be because they have earned their keep and stick around due to that but don't get played much.
1 Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero (alt)
CREATURES (20)
REBELS
1 Children of Korlis (alt)
1 Ramosian Sergeant (alt)
1 Defiant Falcon (alt)
1 Whipcorder (alt)
1 Aven Riftwatcher (alt)
1 Defiant Vanguard (alt)
1 Lawbringer (alt)
1 Lightbringer (alt)
1 Mirror Entity (alt)
1 Zealot il-Vec (alt)
1 Rappelling Scouts (alt)
1 Changeling Hero (alt)
NON REBELS
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Hushwing Gryff
1 Mentor of the Meek (alt)
1 Heliod, God of the Sun
1 Solemn Simulacrum (alt)
1 Sun Titan
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
ARTIFACT (19)
1 Everflowing Chalice
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Skullclamp (alt)
1 Sol Ring
1 Distorting Lens (alt)
1 Mask of Memory
1 Scroll Rack
1 Sword of the Animist
1 Torpor Orb
1 Crystal Ball
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Rings of Brighthearth
1 Slate of Ancestry
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Gauntlet of Power
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Mind's Eye
1 Caged Sun
1 Dreamstone Hedron
1 Land Tax
1 Aura of Silence
1 Bound in Silence (alt)
1 Mobilization
1 Rule of Law
1 Sacred Mesa
INSTANT (8)
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Secure the Wastes
1 Tithe
1 Hallowed Moonlight
1 Unexpectedly Absent
1 Oblation
1 White Sun's Zenith
1 Return to Dust
SORCERY (5)
1 Steelshaper's Gift
1 Decree of Justice
1 Tragic Arrogance
1 Austere Command
1 Terminus
PLANESWALKER (2)
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1 Karn Liberated
LAND (39)
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Buried Ruin (alt)
1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin (alt)
1 High Market (alt)
1 Karoo (alt)
1 Kor Haven (alt)
1 Mistveil Plains (alt)
1 Myriad Landscape (alt)
1 Mystifying Maze (alt)
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx (alt)
23 Plains (alt)
1 Strip Mine (alt)
1 Temple of the False God (alt)
1 Thawing Glaciers (alt)
1 Tower of the Magistrate (alt)
1 Thespian's Stage (alt)
1 Winding Canyons (alt)
Deckstats for this deck can be found here. (Last updated 3/16/15)
Building on a Budget
I realized that I sort of consider my rebel deck one of my more budget lists but in reality, it has a lot of expensive cards in it. I wanted to come up with a build for those looking to experience rebels while not blowing their wallet to do so. That being said, here is a nice budget friendly rebel build. Luckily, the rebels themselves are actually quite cheap to acquire so I think if anything, running the same rebel package and or possibly adding to it is a good thing to look at in a budget friendly build. Since the list will have a little less power to it, I would rather add a few more rebels to the toolbox to make up for it and expand the options of how to rebel tutor.
1 Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero
CREATURES (19)
REBEL PACKAGE
1 Children of Korlis
1 Ramosian Sergeant
1 Amrou Scout
1 Defiant Falcon
1 Ramosian Lieutenant
1 Whipcorder
1 Aven Riftwatcher
1 Defiant Vanguard
1 Lawbringer
1 Lightbringer
1 Mirror Entity
1 Ramosian Captain
1 Zealot il-Vec
1 Rappelling Scouts
1 Changeling Hero
NON REBELS
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Mentor of the Meek
1 Kor Cartographer
1 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
ARTIFACT (23)
1 Everflowing Chalice
1 Skullclamp
1 Sol Ring
1 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Distorting Lens
1 Leonin Sun Standard
1 Mind Stone
1 Surveyor's Scope
1 Torpor Orb
1 Crystal Ball
1 Quietus Spike
1 Sword of the Paruns
1 Phyrexian Processor
1 Slate of Ancestry
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Trading Post
1 Coat of Arms
1 Gauntlet of Power
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Mind's Eye
1 Caged Sun
1 Dreamstone Hedron
1 Staff of Nin
1 Luminarch Ascension
1 Aura of Silence
1 Bound in Silence
1 Sacred Mesa
1 Mobilization
1 Prison Term
1 Faith's Fetters
INSTANT (5)
1 Tithe
1 Oblation
1 White Sun's Zenith
1 Return to Dust
1 Banishing Stroke
SORCERY (7)
1 Steelshaper's Gift
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Retribution of the Meek
1 Decree of Justice
1 Hallowed Burial
1 Austere Command
1 Terminus
LAND (38)
1 Buried Ruin
1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
1 Kor Haven
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Mystifying Maze
29 Plains
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Temple of the False God
1 Tower of the Magistrate
1 Thespian's Stage
If you want to cut further, you could cut the landbase back to entirely plains or anything in between. I think springing for Emeria, the Sky Ruin at the very least is a useful move but all of the utility lands are really optional. The more you cut back on the landbase, the less good Weathered Wayfarer becomes.
Deckstats.net gave me a price around $150.00 for the above budget list. Cutting the landbase back to mostly plains it went down to around $135.00. At the time of writing this content up. My primary list run at approximately $400.00 according to deckstats.net. For me, $400.00 for a deck is actually fairly cheap considering I didn't really spare myself any expenses in creating this deck but I realize that many might have an issue with that sort of price tag which is why I made a budget friendly list that should still give a lot of the experience of the list.
Strategy
This deck is designed to play as a defensive toolboxing style of pillowfort. Its primary winconditions tend to be token swarm tactics that it establishes in the mid to late game. Throughout the game, the access to the rebel toolbox works as a deterrent and utility toolbox to stall for time and generate value. Due to several of the means to lock up, tap down, trade block, chump block, and recover life lost in a turn we make ourselves a bad target for most creatures that might consider coming our direction (this is why I classify it as a form of pillowfort even though it does not use the usual cards and tactics of a pillowfort deck).
Looking at my list offhand, you might expect that I try to swarm with rebels and kill people, that is actually far from the direction I try to go with this deck. Tutoring into a swarm of rebels is extremely slow and inefficient. People can see it coming a long ways out and generally you will get wrathed before that happens. If someone puts a large portion of your tutoring rebels in your graveyard, you become more vulnerable to tuck removal as you have less of the rebels that can recover Lin Sivvi to play. Due to this, I tend to play out enough rebels to be able to work with but I dont necessarily try to maximize my creatures in play due to what I mentioned earlier that its a good way to get wrathed. Instead, I rely on several means to make large token waves at instant speed (White Sun's Zenith, Decree of Justice (cycled), Miracle a Entreat the Angels (Sensei's Divining Top and Scroll Rack help this), Luminarch Ascension, Mobilization, and Sacred Mesa all help me turn mana into creatures relatively fast.
The primary goal of this deck though, is just continue to live. Shift things around you as best as you can allowing opponents to beat each other up as much as possible. This deck has fairly good surprise burst damage to kill one and possibly two opponents but it tends to be really difficult to kill three players in one shot without crazy silly things lining up correctly. Play defensively and let your opponents beat each other up all they want.
Due to the fact that this deck is a defensive toolbox deck, it can be difficult for me to tell others how to play the deck as every game will be very different based on what commanders and tactics you are up against. The general gist of the deck though is to protect itself from harm and so I guess I can walk through some fairly normal situations you might encounter and how I play Lin Sivvi arround them.
Lin Sivvi Breakdown:
Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero is a very key part of our deck. let me do a bit of a breakdown on her and her abilities real quick then I will sort of go over my basic plans for her.
Rebel Package Breakdown:
In general, I tend to try to keep a second tutoring rebel in play when I have time and can afford to do so. Having a second tutoring rebel in play gives you a backup plan if someone attempts to spot tuck Lin Sivvi and in general just gives people a reason not to bother doing so. Outside of trying to get a second tutoring rebel though, your priorities are defending yourself and your board state. Try to have defenses established before someone swings at you if possible to keep from having to respond to their attack with tutoring. This keeps more options available and having less pants down sort of moments. There is no hard and fast progression for the rebels since most of them have priorities of just keeping us and our boardstate alive. Play with things a bit and figure out what your own priorities are. Each game can be very different depending on who you are playing against. These are most of the rebels I consider grabbing and the situation where I grab them.
I didn't bother mentioning most of the other tutoring rebels because I tend to try not to have a lot of them in play at the same time in case of a wrath or tuck wrath. Keeping a good quantity of them in the deck is usually a good thing so that we have options if Lin Sivvi does get tucked. I will occasionally tutor for them assuming I am just about to go on the offensive or if I just need something to act as a road block chump and dont want to give up any of my good utility to do so. Most of them are just here for redundancy though really.
Opening Hand / Mulligans
Early Game
Mid Game
Late Game
Generally speaking, there is always more than one way to build any commander. I myself went with the token based build because the natural access to Mirror Entity makes for a strong wincondition. There are several other ways to try to build though if you wanted to which I will try to shed some light on in case you want to pick up a package or run with your list in a different direction.
Equipment :
Anthem:
Mass Land Destruction:
Combo:
Stax:
Most of white's access to playing stax is through means of things coming into play tapped or not untapping. There are also a few select traditional stax effects like Smokestack that white also has access to. In general, I would say that these tactics are about as frowned upon as mass land destruction on average though. Personally, I would do some small scale testing on this type of strategy to see if you like it before devoting $$$ to trade or buy into the cards to run this. Stax can be a very fun archetype but it comes down to the player and the meta to see how fun this sort of strategy can be. I am just saying that I would be hesitant to push this hard as something people will enjoy playing because generally most people hate playing against stax.
Strengths:
This deck is very very good at dealing with voltron commanders and plays well against most styles of control and aggro decks. Due to the ability to dig itself out of being commander tucked and cheat creatures into play it plays well against the control decks. Voltron commanders have a hard time with several of our defensive capabilities and in general we can use this against them to use them somewhat like a puppet assuming they will allow us to do so and attack other enemies or we put a chain on them.
This deck is very good at looking less threatening than it is. Rebels are weak utility based creatures and as such, you can usually slip under the radar. People will often not really even realize that you are playing somewhat pillowfort due to the nontraditional effects we utilize.
Weaknesses:
This deck has a few weaknesses as its stands currently. Some of these can be overcome somewhat by changing design slightly and some will just never go away due to being mono white in nature.
Card Options
I will review several of the cards that I feel would be worth consideration in a rebel deck. I will list the cards that I currently run and several cards that I have run before or put consideration into running for the benefit of any reader who is looking to make modifications to my list. Cards that appear in my own decklist should be bolded, that is assuming everything is up to date in this section. I also opted to do a section that involved all of the rebels and changelings rather than putting them in their appropriate sections because not all rebels are creatures.
---REBELS---
Amrou Scout two mana rebels who can search for rebels are mostly always worth running. Most of the rebel package caps out at the three mana mark so these guys can tutor for a large portion of the rebels that are worth running. The p/t and most other features of this particular rebel are mostly unimpressive. Having two power means it can attempt to stack up on a larger creature slightly easier and it can be Skullclamped for quick value. Beyond that, there isn't much to say about this particular rebel. Its generally not my go to 2 drop but having it in the deck adds consistency for digging my way out of being tucked.
Amrou Seekers evasive beater style of rebel. Generally speaking, this style of rebel is designed more for a sword beat down style of build. Even then though, Zealot il-Vec's evasion tends to be superior for equipment delivery builds. Amrou Seekers is still nice for some redundancy but its evasion can be very dependant on your opponents and the board state.
Aven Riftwatcher this rebel has a variety of uses. We dont have a lot of air defense so it can serve as a decent chump blocker as well as a source of lifegain. He can also be used in an equipment build as an evasive creature. The lifegain he gives is nice for building a buffer against decks that directly attack life totals. The fact that he vanishes isn't that big of a deal overall but the more pressure type decks you see in your meta the more useful he will be.
Avian Changeling its a mostly unimpressive changeling that has flying. If you are really hurting for flying blockers though, I would personally reccomend looking at Aven Riftwatcher, Thermal Glider, and Nightwind Glider all to be included before going as far as consider this changeling.
Ballista Squad this guy acts primarily as a pillowfort effect. The problem for me is that its incredibly slow to be useable and is very mana inefficient. We have better ways of staving off attacks coming our way. As far as utilizing it as support for attacking out, I think that is rather ineffective as it leaves us potentially tapped down as we pass. Personally, I just dont see a lot of merit in running this guy. Our rebel package is already really good at defending us, he is slow, and he is mana inefficient.
Blade of the Sixth Pride it has a somewhat high power for its mana. It could potentially be utilized in an equipment build but I dont think its a very good creature in general. It could be an alright target to grab when being attacked but x/3's on the ground are not very common in EDH so I would say hes probably just not going to be that effective.
Bound in Silence this is one of the best pieces of utility in our rebel package. This card on its own essentially means that voltron commanders are going to have an incredibly hard time every doing anything around us. The fact that they have to exile this before they can even really consider doing anything to us is amazing. This cuts right through hexproof and shroud (When you cheat an aura into play through means of a tutor into play (in this case our rebel tutor), it does not target and is just placed on a creature of your choosing) and its incredibly difficult to get past. Uril, the Miststalker rolls over to this sort of thing.
Changeling Hero by default, I utilize this rebel to attempt to push Lin Sivvi through wrath effects. It takes a lot less time setting up if Lin Sivvi stays in play and so while I will drop the rest of my board, I generally dont loose much momentum at all if I can keep my commander in play. The abilities of the creature themselves are ok and I have used him to gain life in the past or attempt to trade with an attacker by blocking with him and or stacking blocks against something. Take note thought that the Champion portion of his ability will not work if you have Torpor Orb in play which I also run in this build.
Changeling Sentinel his power and toughness are relatively uninteresting overall and vigilance on a small creature generally doesn't matter. The big question with him is how much you value the changeling ability. If you want to run some tribal cards, the changelings can be somewhat useful in relation to them.
Children of Korlis this creature can be used in a lot of different ways in addition to just making it hard to swarm at us for larger portions of damage. What I really like about the children though is that I can use them to recover from things like Sorrin Markov, Debt to the Deathless, Magister's Sphinx, Exanguinate and such. I also run Phyrexian Processor in my build which the children can recover from whatever life we dump into it as well as GAIN life if you sacrifice the children, tuck the children, and tutor them again. This can be expensive to do but if you set them up ahead of time by tutoring for them at the end of your opponents turn before using them it just adds 4 mana to the cost of the processor to essentially double your life total. They are a nice tool to have access to as if someone randomly swings at you for 20 or something you can just sort of dismiss it afterwards assuming its not commander damage. Players hitting you for sizable life swings can actually turn into net life gain with this guy.
Cho-Arrim Bruiser he sort of fits the equipment build strategy. Considering he can tap down two targets it can open an opponent up for attacks. Add swords and protections to the mix and you can strategically get sword triggers through. In general though, he lacks evasion, size, and is expensive to cast. I was not overly impressed with him in my testing.
Cho-Manno, Revolutionary he prevents damage to himself which is sort of cool but it really feels like he should have been indestructible before they started using it. He still gets wrathed away and in general, if someone is attacking me with something on the ground of decent size, I am more likely to go and get Defiant Vanguard to make it go away. I just found that the number of situations that he fit what I was looking for was too narrow. Any sort of evasion gets past him and he gets swept with the rest of rebels in a wrath. He just.... sort of needed something more to make him better in my mind.
Crib Swap sadly, rebels were all errata-ed to get "rebel permanents." This means that we can tuck this card with Lin Sivvi but we cannot tutor it out with our rebel package. It is disappointing as it would have been an amazing piece of removal for rebels to have gained. Alas, my pipe dream will have to continue.
Defiant Falcon two mana tutoring rebels are great as most of the rebel package fits in the 3 or less mana range. This means that the two mana rebel tutors can fetch most of the other utility from the deck and can tutor for Lin Sivvi and have a somewhat reasonable cost still in their tutors. Defiant Falcon tends to be one of my go to 2 drop tutor rebels due to having flying in case of needing a blocker in a pinch. It is also the right size for skullclamp to run over for some value which is handy.
Defiant Vanguard having this guy in your deck generally means people will reconsider randomly attacking you with titans and such. Being able to go and get a creature that will always trade with attackers is really handy. I ran it with Shield Dancer for a long time but then realized that they had a very similar role but Defiant Vanguard did not require additional mana to utilize. Shield Dancer can theoretically be better in play over time due to the fact that it lives through its encounters but generally people just dont send random attackers on the ground at us due to our toolbox of tricks in the first place. In the end, I found Defiant Vanguard to have the effect I needed more often and the fact that he is a rebel tutor as well helps me out of random tuck incidents.
Errant Doomsayers generally speaking, this is a very situational Whipcorder. While I like the fact that it doesn't require mana to activate, I dislike how situational its tap is. I also dont know how many little creatures I really care if they are tapped or untapped but it could help in an equipment deck to just get past the chump blockers and such. Generally for me, the ability is too narrow.
Fresh Volunteers vanilla bear rebel, no thank you. It just gives me zero utility and its not a useful sized creature.
Jhovall Queen the tank of the rebels. She is the largest rebel that has been printed thus far. Her size as a 4/7 is a little awkward but its also the perfect size to put a sword on and wreck some face. She has vigilance and enough toughness to chump a titan sized creature without any buffs on either. I like her a lot but I can never seem to find a build that ever really wants to tutor for her over other options. She has some cool points and is the biggest tank the rebels have access to. With a sword, a 6/9 vigilant creature with protections can definately do some damage given some time. I could see her working well with a mass land destruction style of equipment build.
Jhovall Rider its expensive and has a mostly unimpressive p/t. It does have trample which might help it connect but sadly its just too small of a body to do much with.
Knight of the Holy Nimbus its funny and it could be somewhat political but in general, multiple opponents who can each pay to disable his regeneration is not so great. He was really cool back when he was in standard but he just isn't going to fly in multiplayer EDH generally speaking.
Lawbringer these guys pack a ton of power. Generally speaking, in a multiplayer game of EDH, someone is usually in one of the two colors of the bringers. These guys can be useful in exiling commanders and creatures. They can also pick off other creatures with access to Distorting Lens which I use primarily for these guys.
Lightbringer these guys pack a ton of power. Generally speaking, in a multiplayer game of EDH, someone is usually in one of the two colors of the bringers. These guys can be useful in exiling commanders and creatures. They can also pick off other creatures with access to Distorting Lens which I use primarily for these guys.
Mercenary Informer generally speaking, he is a worse Nightwind Glider as mercenaries just aren't something that you see in EDH.
Mirror Entity this is my primary go to wincon for making a large swarm of lethal damage on someone. Be careful in utilizing it too early as it often means that you will get wrathed and not accomplish enough with him. I tend to prefer to spawn a large wave of tokens at instant speed and follow it up with entity on my turn making that large swarm of creatures into very very large beaters. Tutoring him into play ahead of time so you can get a larger buff is often sort of a bad move because it opens him up to spot removal before you can make your attack. Also watch out for split second shenanigans when playing this guy. I often try to tutor for him and spend his ability before passing priority to avoid awkward situations with split second.
Nightwind Glider if you need additional protection in the air you can consider the gliders. Generally speaking though, their protections are quite minor. Lightbringer and Lawbringer bring enough hate to justify being narrow in use but I feel like the gliders dont quite bring enough power really. They can be alright against some decks like Kaalia but ideally you started off by using Bound in Silence on her slowing her deck to a slow crawl anyways. They can be alright for an equipment based deck as evasive beaters.
Outrider en-Kor generally speaking about the only use for him is to attempt the rebel based infinite life combo. It is executed by utilizing this guy with Task Force to make Task Force into an infinite toughness creature and then sacrificing him to an effect like Miren, the Moaning Well. Outside of attempting something like that, I wouldnt run this guy or task force.
Pious Warrior he is an amusing chump blocker for his lifegain but in general I would prefer to have Aven Riftwatcher due to the evasion. It is also hard for Pious Warrior to really soak up more than 6 damage on average so the lifegain is probably very similar but he lacks evasion.
Ramosian Captain I use this rebel to increase my overall tutoring rebel count. If someone tucks Lin Sivvi, you need adequate tutoring rebels to be able to recover from it. Generally speaking, I dont really tutor for this rebel but I suppose a 2/2 first strike could randomly be useful in some situations. I only run one rebel that costs 4 mana so generally speaking its a waste of mana to use this rebel tutor over another rebel tutor given the option.
Ramosian Commander I cap my rebels in my list at 5 mana and only run one at 5 mana and one at 4 mana so really spending more mana to rebel tutor is generally a waste. I tend to utilize Lin Sivvi for most of my tutoring anyways so this guy is just more expensive and more expensive to use his abilities for no real good reason. Due to that, I keep my tutoring rebels on the cheap side.
Ramosian Lieutenant cant ever have enough 2 mana tutoring rebels. Its sort of useful that he can equip skullclamp and not die but in general, I dont really tutor for this one in specific all that much. Its good to have redundancy though to keep out of being tucked.
Ramosian Revivalist with lin sivvi's ability to tuck rebels and most of the rebels being cheap anyways, this guy is really just not that useful. If it had a lower mana cost / lower mana targets I might consider it but paying 6 mana is the same for me as tucking and then tutoring most of my rebel package anyways. Generally, I dont like over extending my board position into a wrath unless there is a reason to do so.
Ramosian Sergeant One of the two one drop rebels in the deck. Its really handy having some cheap targets in case I have to mostly tap out for other things in my turn as it means I can still tutor into useful things for Lin Sivvi. It cant get plenty of my rebels but its really cheap to get into play and that makes it useful. Its also useful when trying to multiply as fast as possible as its got the cheapest rebel tutoring outside of Lin Sivvi herself.
Ramosian Sky Marshal evasion plus decent size are nice. Its rebel tutor though is horrifyingly expensive though. If you have a lot of trouble with getting tucked it might be worth considering just because its not bad as a 3/3 flyer that can carry swords and such but in general, its kinda overcosted and its search is extremely expensive.
Rappelling Scouts good defensive blocker. It can go protection from colors making it an excelent chump blocker and it has naturally relative high defense. It flies too so its one of my go to flying defense options to just try to make things go elsewhere.
Reveille Squad its an amusing defensive option. It could be fun in a sword / aggro style of build but generally I feel like I am over-extending into wrath territory with the kind of situations he could be useful in. I could see him being useful in an aggro vs aggro sort of environment though.
Riftmarked Knight its abilities just aren't really relevant. I would just run the glider instead and be happy as flanking doesn't matter and you wont ever want to suspend him.
Saltfield Recluse its just not that relevant 95% of the time. Its ability doesn't scale at all to make it work for EDH. It looks more designed for limited use.
Samite Censer-Bearer it seems designed to help assist against Pyroclasm effects. I just dont see it being relivant in EDH.
Shield Dancer I really like the abilities it has but I found it too similar to Defiant Vanguard in nature plus there was an issue that the Shield Dancer required additional mana after tutoring for it so it wasnt really that easy to use. On top of that, if something had trample, it would sort of push over the Shield Dancer without dying. I just found that Defiant Vanguard fit the needs of what I was trying to do more often. I really only needed to have one of them in my deck as well to deter attackers.
Shields of Velis Vel again, I can only tutor for "rebel permanents" with my rebel tutors. There aren't that many non rebels in here and not a lot of specific tribal buffs in here either. This sort of effect could possibly have some synergy with Coat of Arms as making my own creatures all creature types would make them massive but without the ability to tutor for this sort of thing with the rebel tutor it just doesn't have enough synergy with the deck. Plus I just run too little that matters as far as being tribal in play.
Soul Charmer again, I prefer Aven Riftwatcher if looking for a chump blocker with some lifegain. Pious Warrior probably also trumps this card as well.
Steadfast Guard vigilance on a small creature just doesn't matter enough. Vigilant bears are not really useful.
Sword Dancer he has potential to act as an attack deterrent as you could lower creature's power and then dog pile it but in general I think the ability costs too much mana and doesn't do enough. I sort of lump this guy in with Ballista Squad as being mana inefficient and too situational.
Task Force as I mentioned with Outrider en-Kor, its a combo card to be used with Miren, the Moaning Well type of effects for infinite lifegain. I dont really suggest using this though as all of the cards involved are rather bad cards on their own. In addition, gaining infinite life isn't as good as it might sound due to combo and voltron options of killing players in this format.
Thermal Glider if you need additional protection in the air you can consider the gliders. Generally speaking though, their protections are quite minor. Lightbringer and Lawbringer bring enough hate to justify being narrow in use but I feel like the gliders dont quite bring enough power really. They can be alright against some decks like Kaalia but ideally you started off by using Bound in Silence on her slowing her deck to a slow crawl anyways. They can be alright for an equipment based deck as evasive beaters.
Trenching Steed its a bad creature. I cant really say a lot more than that considering its not even an elephant for 4 mana.
Whipcorder I like the versatility of this guy as we can use him to poke holes in opponents defenses or defend ourselves with him. It can work well in a pillow fort situation to just take out a blocker and allow someone else to swing in and hit people. I find this useful for sniping out planeswalkers on occasion as well as people tend to defend them with a few creatures.
Zealot il-Vec he is great at delivering hits with swords and his damage poke to creatures can be useful when paired with deathtouch. There are a few utility guys who die to one damage pokes as well. I just really wish he could have redirected his damage rather than doing a single damage regardless of power as it really handicaps him. Great in a sword build though for getting in there.
---CREATURES---
Mother of Runes possible protection option as well as part of a Ranger of Eos build. I like it in wrath light metas, spot removal heavy mentas, or in decks that plan on screwing with lands.
Planar Guide possible protection from wraths and a Ranger of Eos target. He plays well with the draw / go style of build but I generally dont like showing my tricks before I have to so opponents knowing he is there has its pros and cons I guess...
Serra Ascendant for the more aggressive builds as well as those looking to run sword builds its a nice and cheap beater. It fits into a Ranger of Eos toolbox nicely and beats in very well especially in a mass LD build.
Weathered Wayfarer He searches for any land which is really useful as we have some solid utility lands as targets. If you want, you can run some of the cycle lands as well to use him as card draw assuming thats something you think you would use. Ranger of Eos is also a decent card to run assuming you have enough one drops that you would search for. Inflating your hand with lands works well with cards like Scroll Rack too as you can convert lands into cards drawn. He is one of white's few value generators and considering how many good utility lands continue to be printed, I dont see him getting worse anytime soon.
Knight of the White Orchid the body is mostly irrelevant but it does ramp a land at the cost of one mana considering he brings the land into play untapped. I normally really like this guy in white decks that lack green but generally speaking you have to drop him on turn three which is when I want to be hitting Lin Sivvi so too often I found myself casting him on turn 4 and later which hurt his performance in my eyes.
Stoneforge Mystic solid creature for running equipment. I ran it for a long time but ended up with just too few equipment to keep him in the list anymore. He is rather standard to see in EDH decks and does some serious work. Torpor Orb in my build again does interfere with him on occasion though.
Aven Mindcensor he can act like a counterspell to opponent's tutor effects. He is cheap to cast and has flash so he sort of works with what the deck is already trying to do. Beyond usually screwing with a counterspell, he often just deters tutoring for a few turns until he gets answered. The big question is how long you can keep him in play. This list as I run it doesn't run a lot of protection for him or reanimation for him either. He can be useful against tutor happy opponents but he also usually dies quite fast against them. He plays better against combo generally speaking.
Burnished Hart it ramps two lands into play. The sort of awkward part of it though is that Lin Sivvi is what I want to do at 3 mana and so that puts me on playing this on turn four and poping it on turn 5 or pushing lin sivvi back. This sort of eats up two turns too before seeing the results so in general, I guess it just doesn't quite feel like it fits what this deck wants to do.
Mentor of the Meek rebels are all mostly small creatures. He functions nicely to allow us to draw off of them coming in. He doesn't function under Torpor Orb which I also run but there are few enough conflicts that I run both of them in the deck together. He is fairly cheap and my rebels are generally cheap enough that I can usually draw 1-2 cards in a turn with him in play.
Scarecrone it has a few interesting uses in this deck due to some of the changeling options we run. It can be used to generate some small draw or if you run enough artifact creatures, serve as a re-animator effect.
Stonecloaker instant speed graveyard hate that is repeatable. I dont like taking out all graveyards necessarily since I can tuck rebels and have Emeria, the Sky Ruin in the deck. It can also be useful for recovering Lin Sivvi in a pinch (sometimes she is tapped or you dont have 5 mana up).
Heliod, God of the Sun the vigilance could potentially be useful in an equipment or stax based build. He will probably end up being animated in a rebel build due to the amount of creatures we tend to put into play. The cost per token is a bit high though so its hard to really run away with him but if you are looking for more token spawning effects he is something to consider I suppose.
Hokori, Dust Drinker he plays the stax game well. Utilize him with some equipment and mana stones and just stax it up. He has good synergy with things like Kismet to keep people from recovering too quickly.
Kor Cartographer its ramp but its slow and it doesn't have a lot of value behind it. Torpor Orb also hurts it and we run that. In general I would rather the ramp that I run be able to be used immediately and not eat up entire turns if possible. I still run Solemn Simulacrum but that's also because of his additional value he brings.
Ranger of Eos hes a potential add but it really comes down to how many targets you run for him. He can generate some value for us though which is hard to do in mono white but I think it really comes down to what one drops you run that you would want to tutor for and how many of them you run.
Solemn Simulacrum just ramp value creature. He is sort of slow to drop and eats up the turn if dropped on curve but its still nice value that white doesnt have a ton of access to.
Karmic Guide you probably need to be running a LOT more creatures that aren't rebels to really make it relevant. I tried it for a while but with Lin sivvi's ability to tuck rebels it just seemed lackluster wayyyyyy too often.
Stonehewer Giant solid creature for an equipment heavy build. I would make sure to have a decent sized equipment toolbox though to run him. He can generate continued value and the equipment he gets can generate further value. You need to run several equipment though to make him worth including though.
Crovax, Ascendant Hero he can help against random utility and opposing token decks. His ability to bounce back to hand is really handy and if he gets stolen from deck it doesn't hurt us which is nice. I like him as an anthem for an aggro style of build due to his low backfire capability. His effect is much less potent than Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite's but her backfire capability is quite monstrous for us.
Duplicant if you have means to abuse creatures then I think hes a decent effect, I just dont have ways to abuse him in here though and I cant really tutor for or recur him that nicely either. I also run Torpor Orb which doesn't mesh well with it and he costs 6 mana at sorcery speed which just doesn't feel good.
Felidar Sovereign this feels like sort of a low blow to run but if you are ok with combo based things its I guess acceptable. The best way to run this guy is with flash so Scout's Warning / Winding Canyons / Vedalken Orrery all help jump him in at the last second for a potential surprise victory. I think its sort of lame but whatever floats your boat I guess.
Sun Titan I guess I just didn't feel like I really had enough targets I really wanted to rez with him. Its possible to use him but I almost feel like I need to run fetchlands in order for him to have enough value to rez with. I looked at my list and I do have like 15 or so targets for him but it just hasn't been enough. When I would cast him there would be like a single target and then there would be like no other opportunity to generate value with him. I also dont like tapping down 6 mana on my turn if I can help it.
Yosei, the Morning Star it is possible to establish a Yosei lock to lock someone out of the game by utilizing Yosei with some sort of rez engine. (Emeria, the Sky Ruin + Sac outlet) (Adarkar Valkyrie + Sac Outlet) (Nim Deathmantle + Sac Outlet) are the ones that come to mind offhand. Of them, Nim Deathmantle has the capability of locking out several players on its own based on how much mana you have available so I would say its the strongest option of them but Emeria, the Sky Ruin being a land is fairly strong as well. Overall, I dont see much synergy with the deck but its an option if you were looking to include some combos.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite a great anthem and great wincon. The biggest issue I have with her is when people steal her from us and or make a ton of clones of her everywhere.
Avacyn, Angel of Hope its a strong effect, but honestly its not that hard to deal with her and I think the likelihood of her being stolen from your deck, cloned off you, or stolen off of you after casting it are something like..... 80% stronger than the chance of you drawing it and it working for you. Some people love her but I just haven't ever been impressed by what she has done. Playing her out is sort of like asking to be answered next and she really isn't that hard to deal with.
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth he draws cards!!!!!!! Also, rebels can deal with him relatively easily if stolen as we have Whipcorder, Bound in Silence, and in a pinch Defiant Vanguard not to mention just the random instant speed answers the deck runs. His annihilate and massive size makes him a nice backup plan. I also dont really mind if my graveyard get shuffled in as most of what I want my graveyard for is the ability to put it back in my deck.
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre he has a vindicate trigger on casting and is relatively hard to kill due to being indestructible. He is a nice plan B style of beater and the deck itself can deal with him being stolen and cloned rather effectively due to Whipcorder and Bound in Silence not to mention just the exile and tuck based removal that we pack.
Blightsteel Colossus he is big, mean, and he can absolutely destroy some people. We can also generally defend ourselves from him if he gets stolen. He is an option for alternate wincons if you want to run him. In general though, I feel like Ulamog accomplishes more though since he has an on cast ability trigger and essentially any blockers will force Blightsteel into taking two+ turns to kill someone. I think that annihilate 4 plus having 10+ power is more effective than infect + trample.
---ARTIFACT---
Everflowing Chalice I like this stone as a varying cost / effect mana stone. I can drop it at 2 mana and use it to be more explosive into my early game or I can wait until later and drop it at 6 or more mana as sort of a Gilded Lotus style of stone. The best part is that it comes in untapped so it can be used immediately and so it keeps my rebel tutors still available. Its easy for this to generate some seriously large amounts of mana later on which is nice and it has a varying level of use depending on what you need it to be.
Mana Crypt it is amazing ramp, but Lin Sivvi costs 1WW so it really doesn't ramp well into her. On top of that, this deck wins in a long drawn out game so taking 1.5 dmg a turn (on average) will sort of add up quickly over the course of a long game. I tend to focus on using this more in a deck that I am trying to run out as a fast deck. In slow drawn out games, it can do a lot of damage to you especially if you aren't lucky about its randomness. I have taken damage for like 8 straight turns before using this in my Thrun deck and using it in a slower designed deck seems sort of problematic.
Orochi Hatchery it can be used as a large token spawner that can be repeatedly activated for dudes. It is a little clunky though in the fact that you generally tend to need to drop crazy mana into it for a turn and then like 2-3 turns later you become a problem for the board. I do however like it as a card that could be run after being wrathed off the board as your first thing back in play. I tend to try to drop it at 3+ counters on it and I like being able to activate it the same turn I drop it. Its not cheap to work with but has potential for CRAZY token generation.
Basilisk Collar deathtouch can be used to keep attackers away from turning sideways in your general direction. Offensively speaking, it can be paired with Zealot il-Vec for a removal stick in an equipment build.
Expedition Map utility lands are solid. If you want, you can build around one in specific and add this to fetch it. Or, if you just like having access to fun toys its still solid.
Explorer's Scope it can be amusing with topdeck manipulation but overall, I find it a little underwhelming.
Meekstone its sort of a stax style of pillowfort effect. The downside to it is that it keeps opponents from attacking each other as well. It can be combined with Whipcorder to just lock up creatures though so they cant just defend themselves with fatties. The hard part with this effect is if you try using it with equipment, most equipment will buff the rebels into getting stuck tapped so you will probably have to shift the equipment around and alternate untapping.
Pithing Needle its a decent card if you encounter a lot of utility commanders. Generally speaking, its hard to consistantly draw it in this style of deck and its an incredibly meta dependent style of card. If you constantly have issues with a commander like Arcum Dagsson or Captain Sisay though, it can be worth running.
Relic of Progenitus its solid grave hate. It hits our own graveyard though too so you generally want to tuck rebels before executing it. It can be useful for its tap ability though too as it can keep opponents off of rezing creatures from other graveyards as most players will agree to exile the targeted creature in response to a rez given the option. It cantrips to boot when it pops.
Scrabbling Claws useful for slow rolling grave hate. The tap ability can often be used to cull graveyards or be used in response to an attempt to rez from someone else's graveyard. It can also pop to hit a target cards plus draw a card which is nice. Its got a smaller effect than Relic but it doesn't hit our own graveyard and tends to slow roll just as nicely. It sort of comes down somewhat to how much you value your own graveyard as to how useful it can be in comparison to Relic of Progenitus.
Sensei's Divining Top topdeck manipulation is really prime in a deck where you assume you will search and shuffle about once a turn. This means that every turn, you get access to the best of three cards as your draw. Then you get to ship out the extra cards and send them off. You really have to watch out on using the top's ability to draw a card though as it can be easy to accidentally ship it off if you dont pay attention. This is a great card at triggering Miracle cards too due to being able to stack them as you want and draw them when you need them. This is one of the best tools you have at just getting quality draws. Unfortunately, we dont have a lot of ways to go get it. Its well worth burning an Enlightened Tutor to get though as it pays off in gold over time.
Skullclamp depending on your setup, this can draw a lot of cards in one shot. Its nice to build into using this and just burn off spare rebels with this. It works really really well with the lawbringer / lightbringer as well. It can be hard to really run away with this card though as its a pain to tutor and tuck the rebels so I will sometimes draw like 2-4 cards and just set it up on a rebel that will live through its equip. Its a good card in here, but unfortunately we dont have a ton of disposable creatures that we want to just die on us in here.
Sol Ring solid ramp and its cheap. There isn't much to say about it other than its a solid staple. It taps for more mana than it costs to drop with zero downsides.
Wayfarer's Bauble land ramp can be robust assuming your meta doesn't run a lot of mass land destruction. If you see mass land destruction, you might move this to a mana stone instead. In general though, I would rather have lands in play than a mana stone though as stones tend to get blown up.
Defense Grid its amusing to screw with opponents since most of what we do on opponents turns is rebel tutoring which this does not effect. It can be useful to keep people off your back but it also screws with us a little and stops opponents from stopping each other at instant speed somewhat. It has pros and cons though and if you play against a lot of draw / go opposition it could be worth considering.
Distorting Lens this thing has a TON of hidden uses that arent always easy to see offhand. The most obvious use for this card is to enable Lawbringer and Lightbringer. Using the lens, we can nuke any colored creature which is super handy. Ouside of that, we can poke holes in protections, we can unequip swords by making the swords themselves a color that they protect against, and we can just randomly screw with things lol. Its been more impressive so far than I had originally expected but protection from white is actually a problematic thing so its handy that this deals with it so well by just making the thing that gives the protection into a color it protects against.
Illusionist's Bracers it can be used to try to swarm with rebels in play. I generally speaking dont play that type of deck where I want to put as many rebels in play as fast as I can though so I dont run this but its an option if you want.
Leonin Sun Standard its an option for playing anthem effects. Its going to be half as productive as Mirror Entity but its still a potentially powerful effect.
Lightning Greaves it can be used for haste to use rebels sooner. Generally speaking, this really only matters when playing Lin Sivvi out but its also difficult to play her out and have much mana to use for rebels in the same shot. I generally dont worry about this.
Mask of Memory its an excellent means to generate card advantage. You can ditch rebels to the discard and shuffle them back into the deck later or just get rid of whatever you dont need at the time. I tend to find the card advantage from this to be better than Sword of Fire and Ice and its much cheaper to drop and equip in one shot. The downside is that you need to run some evasive rebels and still need to connect. I cut it myself because too many people in my meta run maze effects so I find it difficult to lightly run an equipment package in this deck and connect through. Too many people were willing to maze a 1/1 bird to keep me off of drawing two cards.
Mind Stone generally speaking, I try to get my mana stones in this deck to tap for more than one mana. This stone has an advantage though that it can be cycled off for a card later if needed. Colorless mana doesn't really hurt much and ramping at 2 mana works well as it doesn't put me off my curve.
Scroll Rack we can push rebels back into the deck, we can set up miracles, and we can bloat our hands up full of lands with things like Land Tax and turn them into nonland cards with this. Scroll Rack is a card of many hats but its here to help ship our hand off and make it better. With a high number of shuffle effects we can ship out anything we dont like that is in our hand and draw into something else. Its a very useful card as it sort of selectively wheels your hand however you want. I actually consider it to be one of the better hand fixing / drawing cards in the deck. If you see this in an opening hand with mana you probably dont need to mulligan at all as you can just ship them off with the rack before shuffling.
Surveyor's Scope I am looking to test this new ramp card and see how it goes. It has some interesting potential and it drops in before our commander drops which is nice. I am not really certain yet as to what to expect from it but it looks interesting.
Torpor Orb it screws with ETB effects. We run a lot of creatures that dont really have ETB effects so its a nice way to screw with opponents. It does screw with the Changeling Hero which is probably one of the more annoying ones that it screws with since he is part of our toolbox. In general though, it screws with opponents a lot more than it does with us though.
Tsabo's Web this can be a great way to screw with opponents utility lands and open up equipment connecting. Its nice as well that it replaces itself in hand as well. You really dont need to build around this much but I wouldn't push too hard on the utility tap lands if you run it.
Umezawa's Jitte it can be used for some alright value generation in an equipment build. Generally speaking though, since we are not playing a voltron deck it is hard to really utilize for much. The -/- ability is probably going to be as good as you can get with it in here. Its really not well suited for this deck even if going an equipment package because pumping an evasive rebel just isn't the same as pumping a voltron commander. Lifegain in commander, is mostly under whelming and with the pump less effective, it really limits how productive the card can be in a rebels build. You can toy with it, but I wouldn't go out and buy / trade into one to test it in a rebels build.
Winter Orb it can be used in a stax style of build where you hate on opponents resources. Rebels tend to be cheap to tutor and have good utility so you could push for mana stone ramp and hate on lands while trying to connect in with equipment and in general setting up stax tactics.
Crawlspace because it only applies to attacking you, this can be utilized to suppress swarm decks from going all out on you. It is a very specific effect though so I would wait to be having problems with swarm before considering this as its sort of a do nothing style of card against everyone else. It can also be easily removed before attacking you so watch out from depending on this sticking to defend you. It is a pillowfort style of card and can be removed if someone is determined to hit you.
Crucible of Worlds if you have troubles sticking utility lands, you want to use fetchlands, or you play against mass land destruction. In general, I dont really find myself to be relying on any one land in this deck though so without using fetchlands, it feels a little underwhelming to include in here.
Crystal Ball topdeck manipulation is fantastic in this deck because drawing more cards is hard to do and we tend to shuffle a lot. This means we can try to dig into the cards you want or need for your turn by having access to the ball. I find the ball to be sort of superior to some other topdeck manipulators in decks that can't shuffle a lot but even with our high shuffle effects, it can make a nice addition as sort of a less powerful Sensei's Divining Top effect.
Darksteel Ingot indestructible, it ramps slightly, and it generally doesn't get swept. Its about as good as ramping a land with some pros and cons to it. I like it as we can use it to break through something like a contamination lock. In general though, its a little over costed for what it does here but it doesn't get swept so that's handy.
Darksteel Plate it can help to stick Lin Sivvi through a lot of wrath effects without needing to try to protect her with the Changeling Hero. It is also very handy for just having a really solid blocker on hand. Since the deck already has access to Changeling Hero though, I dont think this is really a necessity but it can be nice to toy with.
Diviner's Wand since changelings are wizards, we can get the auto equip to work for us with this card. Paying 4 mana per card is not cheap but white has cruddy access to draw and this deck does push hard on drawing.
Druidic Satchel none of the abilities it can hit are necessarily bad and its reveal ability can be used to determine if you want to tap a rebel on your turn before drawing to push off that draw into something else. The land into play is obviously the objective most of the time but tokens and life are not really bad.
Ensnaring Bridge against opposing aggro and voltron decks this can work nicely. Our draw is really bad but its rare that we are trying to swing with really large creatures. The biggest downside is that it might encourage you to dump your hand and it doesn't keep opponents from taking and dealing damage to each other. Its a political pillowfort card though.
Oblivion Stone solid sweeper that we can control as we need it. The deck is very defensive as well so we can potentially drop this and defend a few turns before using it. I dont like having to blow up my stuff but its possible to fate counter or even get Changeling Hero leading into doing this. Being an artifact means there are a few ways possible to recover it too which can be useful on occasion.
Quietus Spike this little bugger can do some serious work with some of the evasive rebels. The biggest problem is that its really a pain to drop and equip in one shot as its not cheap to do either. It also sort of falls off on how hard it hits people making it still difficult to close out a game with it. It works well on Zealot il-Vec though as he can easily deliver hits one damage pings can be very potent with deathtouch.
Rings of Brighthearth it works with Lin Sivvi to get two activations out of her but honestly, I would be more interested in using this with fetchlands to ramp. Its sort of an awkward artifact though in general though. I dont tend to try to swarm with rebels either so I just didn't find myself needing rebels two at a time usually. It depends on what you want to do though and how much value you can generate from it. As far as using it to multiply rebels though, I found it underwhelming.
Sculpting Steel it can be a generally speaking solid card or it can be very underwhelming. It depends on how many good artifact targets you see. I generally like to run it in a list thats sort of artifact heavy. Cloning mana stones can be a nice move and a good way to pick up on other people's good ramp / value generators.
Spear of Heliod its an anthem effect and a pillowfort effect in one. Generally speaking, the pump is too small and the utility effect on it is rather situational and we can tend to fight off the sort of creatures that we would care about that it can hit.
Staff of Domination it can do a lot of handy things as mana dumps. Its a nice effect to keep up as options too. Most of the things it can do we sort of can do as well but the option for card draw is nice. I often dont like over extending the rebels in play if I dont have to so it seems like a nice way to fort up and just draw cards. Its a card that you ideally want to be on a big mana strategy to run.
Sunstone its a pillowfort effect that you can use to try to fend off swarm style of decks. Unfortunately, once again it is a type of permanent that swarm decks dont tend to have an issue answering.
Sword of Feast and Famine its nice because it can pay for itself and its equip. This means less time with the pants down after doing the cast + equip. The evasions and protections are probably one of the better ones too of the swords. It works well to be moved to another rebel to defend with.
Sword of Fire and Ice card advantage is hard to come by in mono white. It gives some spot removal and draw so its handy to have. Its sort of a pain to drop and equip a sword in one shot though.
Sword of Light and Shadow you probably want some fairly powerful non rebel creatures in the deck to make this worthwhile since we can always tuck and re-tutor the rebels. Reanimating rebels is very underwhelming.
Sword of War and Peace it can pack some punch and since this inst a voltron deck, its a useful card for an equipment package to carry. Its also nice that it punishes the greedy hand players but its protections are kind of terrible since nobody really wants to swords to plowshares a rebel anyways.
Thousand-Year Elixir the ability to tap immediately to rebel tutor is sort of handy. I am often trying to keep Lin Sivvi in play though so if she dies and has to be recast it can be a pain to have extra mana to tutor for much. The untap ability is alright but incredibly costly to pay to tutor, pay to untap, then pay to tutor again. I like it the most with the Lawbringer and Lightbringer to tap exile on the spot. Its also very funny to surprise someone with a Whipcorder that can be used twice in one shot. In general, I found that people tended to blow it up on sight though so I really never got to use it.
Erratic Portal it can be used to harass opponents creatures or used to recover Lin Sivvi to hand in case of an emergency. Its nice due to the low mana to utilize it. It can be very tricky to play around keeping 2 extra mana up all the time as an opponent as you can use this at the end of opponents turns and on your turn as well to force them to pay two more at a time.
Gemstone Array it can be used to store mana for turns where you need a large portion of mana. Generally speaking, you wont use all of your mana every turn so this is useful to stockpile mana. Its more useful in the mid to late game though than the early game since it doesn't actually ramp really on its own.
Goblin Charbelcher spin the wheel of randomness and see how hard you hit lol. This can be very productive in conjunction with Land Tax or Endless Horizons which can strip large portions of your landbase out. Its sort of a silly random thing but it can be used to dispatch creatures or shoot for direct damage to the face. I would really only use it if you have plans to extract large portions of your landbase though and even then, its a little sketchy. Its super amusing though if you randomly shoot it at someone's face and hit a large clump of no lands.
Helm of Possession super fun creature theft. Sadly, it really works the best with additional sac outlets. It can be used to harass opponents creatures though which is fun but without a follow up sac outlet I just didn't find it as useful.
Jester's Cap it can hate on combo players by dismantling pieces of their combo while still in their deck. Generally you only need to take one pice out of each combo to disable a combo so try to find the key piece or pieces to dismantle with this.
Phyrexian Processor it makes some big tokens to beat face with. Ideally utilize Children of Korlis with this card to recover any life you pay into it or possibly gain life by cycling the children back around a second time. The tokens are big and smashy like.
Slate of Ancestry it allows you to cycle your hand somewhat nicely. It can work just fine even with just 3+ guys in play as often your hand gets a bit stagnant so its a nice card especially with the fact that this deck tends to have several creatures in play quite often. Its sort of expensive to drop and use in one shot but its how I generally suggest trying to use it as slow rolling it doesn't tend to pan out nearly as well.
Smokestack can be utilized in a stax style of build. Its very harsh if you can manage to ratchet it up to more than one counters while stabilizing but its also very difficult to do.
Sword of the Paruns it can act as an anthem effect for going on the offensive while still being an equipment which is very rare. It makes it easier to tutor for and still its power buff is fairly strong considering most anthems only give one point of power or toughness.
Teferi's Puzzle Box it works to turn land fetches like Land Tax into card draw and it also ships off rebels and just cycles hands quickly. It can be useful for disrupting combo decks as they can have a hard time setting everything up in their hands in one shot. Its also sort of unfortunate against decks that focus heavily on card draw as every turn they get a chance to bloat their hands up and turn it into a new bigger hand. It does give us a bit of a chance to do the same as we get more access to our big draw effects. It works well with Scroll Rack as well as you can push good cards into your next hand. Playing against things like Consecreated Sphinx though can be EXTREMELY bad though.
Thran Dynamo reasonably costed artifact that taps for almost as much as it costs. It generates TONS of mana considering it costs 4 to drop and taps for 3 more mana. Its great as it has very small net mana loss for the turn you drop it and can immediately be used to tutor for rebels.
Tower of Fortunes its sort of rough on the mana but instant speed drawing 4 cards in one shot for 8 mana is actually not a bad return for the cost when you look at it. Its just soooooo taxing to do this in a turn that I dont like it. Its an option though if you are hurting for draw and are willing to drop some big mana into achieving some draw.
Trading Post it does a lot of sort of useful things for the deck. You can ditch rebels from hand where you can then tuck them or reanimate them into play via Emeria. You can sacrifice rebels to recover draw and ramp effects. It generates goats for chump blocking or mirror entity swinging. Its just..... useful I guess. It can serve as a sac outlet to get Lin Sivvi out of play too potentially if you cant keep 5 mana up for the changeling hero.
Vedalken Orrery being that its sort of a draw / go style of deck, being able to flash cast wraths and creatures has its advantages. It can be very potent to flash in some big plan b style of creatures or even just a big token swarm at end of turn. The hard part of this style of card is that it has some threat attached to it and generally speaking we need somewhat of a setup already to use it. If you get swept for nonlands you will end up loosing a lot but at the same time, using this can help avoid being swept on some key cards too.
Well of Lost Dreams if you try hard, there are some lifegain rebels that can be used. In general though, I dont think there are enough of them that are really solid that including this becomes that good of a move but it could be something to consider.
Batterskull it starts with a body on it and can be moved to another creature and utilized as a good attacker + defender. I like it in decks that are looking to do more gradual attacking. The size buff is nice, vigilance is nice, and lifelink on it are all useful to have. It is a little expensive to cast and a little expensive to move though so try not to do that more than you have to. I also saw a lot of people blow it up if I ever tapped out which was sort of annoying.
Coat of Arms one of the biggest bang for your buck anthems. If you want to work off of a rebel swarm and run people over that way, this is a good way to pack a lot of power for not much mana. It generally works well with token swarms as well as they share creature types. Mirror Entity works amazingly well too with Coat of Arms as even just making creatures 1/1s will make for a huge power buff since he adds the changeling ability to each of your creatures makeing them absolutely enormous.
Eldrazi Monument this is more of a defensive anthem. It unfortunately sort of brings a lot of hate down on itself considering how defensive it is. You also have to keep bringing out new creatures as it eats a creature a turn. I didn't have very good results with this personally as it hinders multiplying by forcing you to sacrifice a creature every turn and the rebels were already so defensive it just didn't open me up much for attacking out. It brings a fair bit of utility at least but I found it brought more attention down on itself than the power it actually brought.
Gauntlet of Power its an anthem and it allows for crazy mana generation. Most of the big game enders involve spending X mana to make a ton of dudes and swing out. It also helps Mirror Entity make things really crazy big. Anthems can be useful for keeping rebels in the game against things like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite.
Gilded Lotus it costs sort of a lot of mana for a mana stone, but it taps for three mana as well so its a net loss of two mana the turn you drop it. Most of the rebels costs 3 mana as well so it ramps and allows us to still rebel tutor for most things the turn it drops.
Mind's Eye one of the more powerful actual card drawing engines available to mono white. Make sure to milk it for whatever you can. Its sort of unfortunate that it consumes so much mana the turn you drop it as it can easily screw with your ability to rebel tutor for at least a turn. Still, its really powerful and generally gets answered fairly quickly.
Memory Jar its card draw, unfortunately I have a lot of things in this deck and build that need to be played at the right time and so I didnt feel that this sort of temporary wheel could be utilized that well. This isnt the sort of deck that just blowing your hand is a good thing so it felt really odd in general. I would rather just draw a few cards than be forced to try to empty a hand on my turn.
Pariah's Shield it can be utilized with Cho-Manno, Revolutionary as a damage shield. You can really put it on any creature and still get some decent results but Cho-Manno, Revolutionary in specific wont die regardless of what damage is coming in. Unfortunately, this is fairly easy to break through for those trying to be aggressive. It can work alright against the swarm style of decks that we occasionally have issues with and its an equipment so it can be included into a package there if you like.
Ring of Three Wishes it is a cheaper and generally better Planar Portal due to the lower cost to drop and activate. It can be alright if you specifically want certain cards from your deck more consistantly. Its really expensive to drop and use though so generally I prefer to just run more wincons rather than take up turns trying to tutor but the fact that it can retrieve three cards is fairly strong.
Storm Cauldron sort of a stax style of effect. Its hard to play arround but keep a low mana curve and use lots of mana stones and it wont be as rough. It will hurt the heavy ramp big mana decks though but its generally an annoying as hell effect lol.
Caged Sun its an anthem which helps against Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite type of effects which really hurt us. Most of our finishers involve spawning x tokens or mirror entity for a huge buff so it helps in a lot of ways to close out a game.
Dreamstone Hedron its an expensive mana stone but it also taps for three mana immediately so we can still rebel tutor. Its ability to sacrifice for card draw is also really handy as it can get us some cards flowing if the three mana isn't as important.
Knowledge Pool generally speaking, this card is known for its Teferi lock. However, we dont neccesarily cast a lot of spells and and have sort of bad cards to contribute to the pool so it could be amusing to use to push people off of their game. This would be more of using it to troll opponents though but I can see some good value to be had in doing so.
Myr Incubator with access to sizeable mana, this card can churn out a big stack of tokens in one shot. The biggest problem is that its easy to see coming and we would still need an anthem to make them of decent size. This means that we probably need to keep at least one tutoring rebel in play through the turn so its likely that we would need to drop the Incubator, not get wrathed that turn, and then proceed to not be tampered with in the following turn to make this work. I think its a good card and I use it in my Marton Stromgald deck, but I think we probably need more large anthems to really reliably get away with this in here.
Staff of Nin its card draw and slight pokes. The pokes can be used to harass ETB and utility creatures opponents have. It can poke at planeswalkers to keep them in check and possibly screw with equipment being put onto ETB chumps. In general, I dont bother too much with poking players as it usually just irritates them without making any real progress. The draw is nice and the primary reason for running it. Its really freaking slow though to generate value but its hard to come across good draw in white.
Akroma's Memorial this gives a lot of cool abilities. My biggest problem with including it is that it generally eats up a turn to cast it and everyone over reacts over it because its good abilities. Its hard to make as much use of the abilities it gives in here as the amount of hate it generally draws. Due to this, I tend to not run it unless I REALLY NEED IT. I think its hard to make it pay off and the small pokes rebels can achieve is not generally that effective for how much of a pain it is to cast and keep in play.
Possessed Portal it has potential to just lock up the gamestate as it is. It is really nice against decks that just rely on wheeling their hands through card drawing and if nobody has an answer for this card in their hand it can be difficult to break through it. It is also worth noting that it has good synergy with some cards such as Unexpectedly Absent and Lapse of Certainty where they are potentially just a short stall but in this case they can help escalate a hard lock.
---ENCHANTMENT---
Gerrard's Battle Cry its a scalable anthem. Its not as efficient as several others but it has the scaling pay mana and pump style of scalability. Its worse than Mirror Entity and Leonin Sun Standard though.
Land Tax it guarantees land drops and it can work to bloat up your hand if you have something like Scroll Rack or Teferi's Puzzle Box to push cards back into the deck and draw other cards with.
Inheritance card draw in mono white. Unfortunately it can be sort of hard to control when this happens and the mana per card is fairly bad in general. The upside though is that this deck tends to keep most of its mana up and available so it shouldn't be that hard to pay the mana when it does happen.
Blind Obedience it can be used as somewhat of a stax style of effect to tax opponents resources. It works well with effects that control untapping of permanents as well.
Flickerform it can be used as a means of protection for Lin Sivvi. The biggest problem I have with this sort of effect is that if you ever tap out, opponents will consider using spot removal on you just because they cant catch you outside of that situation. So, if you run something like this you might have to keep the mana to flicker it out up at most all times.
Luminarch Ascension its an ANGEL CANNON!!!!! Seriously, when this thing goes active, its a scarry thing. It really doesnt need much support but being a defensive toolbox deck, we can generally speaking defend it alright to go active. It will draw some serious hate though in general so prepare for it to eat every flavor of disenchant ever printed lol. It works great though if your meta doesn't run real heavy on spot removal effects though. Even if they do, it has a chance of just running away with the game.
Militia's Pride it could make an interesting effect for heavy anthem builds or stax based builds. The tokens come very cheaply for the mana per body breakdown. Generally it has some issues with the fact that its hard to swarm with nontoken creatures but they can add up quickly in anthem and stax builds.
Act of Authority it outright exiles a target when it comes in and you can exile a second target the next turn. It sort of has some political aspects though and its likely that the person you just exiled a card from is going to be slightly irate at you. The upside though is that everyone has to consider if they have good targets in play or good things in their deck still that they wouldn't want this used again against them so its.... interesting and slightly political. I run a LOT of artifacts though in this deck so with close to 30 targets to be return attacked its a little sketchy. It seems like a card that is best used in a deck with relatively few artifacts / enchantments.
Aura of Silence it can act as as removal or as a tax and slowing effect on opponents until you want to remove something. Its nice to have access to with Enlightened Tutor in a pinch. Its also the right mana cost for Sun Titan if you want to run him as the fact that it has a sacrifice use is nice with a potential repeatable rez effect.
Crackdown it works well with stax style of effects such as Winter Orb / Static Orb / Kismet. It can also be used with Whipcorder to tap down opponents creatures to swing past and since it only hits nonwhite creatures, we can equip up our guys and swing in without worry about it affecting us. Its an all around useful stax effect. I wouldn't really add it lightly so much as adding it with a stax style of equip build.
Fanatical Devotion it can be used to keep rebels in play in some wraths or it can be used to bail out in a tuck effect or whatever. Due to having access to Changeling Hero and the ability to tutor for our commander though, I think it has less importance in general but I think it can still be used as a decent sac outlet.
Ghostly Prison token defense 101 here. This is a bread and butter pillowfort card. It is really effective against swarm armies though as it greatly hinders their ability to inflate in size as well as attack you in the same turn. The downside to these style of defenses is that token decks tend to have good answers for them but on the flip side they will have a hard time attacking you until they can get this out of the way. Its unfortunate when this just drops out of nowhere on you though.
Karmic Justice it can be used to dissuade opponents from blowing up mana stones and such. It makes it harder to sweep your non-creatures in general. I generally dont really like running it though as it often gets spot removed before you take a sweeper. Its often a situational do nothing style of card too often.
Mobilization generally speaking, its sort of a lot per token but it works as a nice mana dump. Rebels are a pain to mass multiply and generally speaking this handles multiplaying bodies in play a lot easier than rebels do. It also doesn't hurt as much if we eat a wrath due to tokens in play than having a big swarm of rebels as then we have to deal with tucking and tutoring the rebels.
Nevermore you can entirely shut someone out of their commander being cast or a key card from their deck. It can be used to stumble a combo player assuming you know how their deck works as well. Its a nice card but has to be preemptively cast which makes it sort of awkward in a lot of cases.
Prison Term its a solid arrest effect. I tend to prefer Faith's Fetters for the versatility but this can be moved to new threats and shifted onto a hexproof commander that might come in after casting it.
Sacred Mesa its a cheap mana per token generator. It works well at getting a swarm of tokens quickly in a deck designed to achieve large mana. The fact that we have to sacrifice a token per turn is sort of unfortunate but if you spend more than 6 mana in a turn on tokens, it becomes much more lucrative than Mobilization.
Story Circle it can be used as a pillowfort effect to keep opponents away. Its nice that it is versatile as to what color you choose but in general, the deck already accomplishes most of what this might contribute on its own with the rebels.
Diversionary Tactics it can be used to manipulate opponents creatures. In general though, we already have access to Whipcorder though so I would be hesitant to play this but I think it could work well in a meta that runs creature heavy and wrath light. You could focus more on multiplying rebels and tap down problems as they arise with this effect.
Endless Horizons it can be used to get some card advantage in terms of consistently hitting your land drops or stripping most of the remaining lands from your deck so you dont have to draw them. I tend to play it sort of conservatively in that I usually go for somewhere in the range of 4-7 lands with this card as much more than that and it feels like you have stripped the lands from your deck. It could feasibly be used with Goblin Charbelcher to serve as a big cannon if you really want. It also works well with things like Scroll Rack and Teferi's Puzzle Box to turn into card drawing.
Faith's Fetters its actually a really solid arrest style of card. It works on any permanent and it gains some life. I like it to lock up commanders in play or just stop anything thats a problem. In my mind, this is one of the best white arrest effects due to versatility. If you want more answers for opponent's commanders its a good one to consider.
Karma really going a bit deep here with this one but it can be utilized with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (yes its legal to run in a mono white deck) and used to slowly tax opponents out of the game. Karma can be tutored for in a few ways since its an enchantment and with access to Weathered Wayfarer and Expedition Map to get Urborg, it could be something to toy with but I think its more of a cute interaction than something legitimate. Stern Judge also works as a second copy of Karma. You can use Children of Korlis to offset the loss and outlast opponents. Its also worth noting, that most people run Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in BX decks anyways.
Kismet it works as a stax based effect to cripple game development. It works really well with things that control untapping as well such as Winter Orb, Hokori, Dust Drinker, and Static Orb to make it even more difficult to play into the game.
Marshal's Anthem its an anthem and can act as a large rez effect. Unfortunately, most of the rebels aren't worth spending rez on so you probably want to run a good number of non rebel creatures to make this worthwhile.
Cathars' Crusade it can really bring in a ton of power to your guys. The biggest problem I have with it is that it sort of plays itself out and tells opponents that you will be coming hard soon and you probably should get blown up across the board before that happens. It brings a TON of power but you have to be able to slow roll a really obvious threat which I generally dont like doing.
Mystic Barrier this card is crazy useful against opposing aggro / voltron decks. You can shift the attacks away from you and more importantly you can potentially shift attacks in the direction you want them to be. This is 100% pillowforting but its nice in the fact that someone with a TON of mana cant push through you and you dont lock up all attacking so much as just push it around you. The biggest downside is that trying to swarm out becomes more difficult too but you can still usually make a productive attack as you get to pick the direction of your attack making it so you can still attack a majority of opponents. It looks super fun to toy with but I think its a bit of a meta call and a personal flavor call to include it.
Sphere of Safety pillowfort style of card. It can work alright but you have to be sort of heavy on the enchantment build. If you dont have a ton of enchantments in your list I would suggest going with Ghostly Prison instead.
Martyr's Bond I tend to dislike this sort of effect as its really odd in the fact that opponents may shoot your permanents to chain down and hit another opponents permanents and pick up value in their removal. That said, it can do some fun things with the sacrifice based creatures. Overall, I dont really feel that it works that well overall.
True Conviction it can work as a value generator and damage output in an equipment type of build. Lots of the good equipment do things each time you deal combat damage so double strike can ramp up the amount of equipment triggers. The increased output and lifegain are useful things as well especially if you go up against opposing aggro and or swarm styles of decks.
---INSTANT---
Condemn it can work as general tuck. The thing is, commanders that attack are sort of this deck's specialty so I wouldn't worry about those commanders so much as the utility ones which are harder to deal with. Due to this, I strongly discourage use of this card in a rebels deck and for the most part as a card at all in this format due to how niche its use generally is.
Enlightened Tutor we dont have access to many tutors for non rebels. The artifact package in this deck has some very key and useful cards including things like Sensei's Divining Top which I almost always want. It can fit a lot of roles depending on what the needs of the situation are though. Its unfortunate that its card disadvantage but I think its still great even if it is disadvantage because of its versatility.
Path to Exile really solid creature spot removal. This deck generally does well against most creatures you would naturally want to use spot removal against though. There are some utility based creatures such as Consecrated Sphinx and Deadeye Navigator that can be really necessary to remove. Generally speaking, I found that most spot removal that works specifically for creatures was mostly unnecessary for this deck though so I sort of moved to more of the ones that can target anything instead of the cheap creature specific ones because too often, creatures or non commander creatures were not what I really wanted solid removal for.
Scout's Warning it can be used to flash in Lin Sivvi which can minimize the amount of time she is exposed in play. Its a little underwhelming though since it only allows you to do it once though.
Swords to Plowshares solid removal for sure. This deck generally does well against most creatures you would naturally want to use spot removal against though. There are some utility based creatures such as Consecrated Sphinx and Deadeye Navigator that can be really necessary to remove. Generally speaking, I found that most spot removal that works specifically for creatures was mostly unnecessary for this deck though so I sort of moved to more of the ones that can target anything instead of the cheap creature specific ones because too often, creatures or non commander creatures were not what I really wanted solid removal for.
Tithe card advantage plain and simple. It can grab us Mistveil Plains as well which is handy as turn two we can Tithe and drop the Mistveil Plains when I normally dont have much to do anyways. There is also a trick to Tithe if you bother running fetchlands where you can crack it, and while its ability is on the stack you can Tithe in which you will have one less land in play before you resolve finding that land. Generally speaking, anytime you dont go first you should have no issue getting the two lands from this card though.
Dawn Charm it has some nice versatility with the option of fogging, it can push Lin Sivvi through a wrath that you are short of mana to champion out of, and occasionally there are spells like Mind Twist or Recurring Insight that could target us.
Disenchant decently solid spot removal that is generally versatile. It doesn't help the deck's card advantage options to one for one spot removal things in multiplayer but these effects are sometimes necessary and its nice to have cheap ones to do it with.
Renounce the Guilds it can be useful against all the multicolored decks that EDH generally brings. Its unfortunate that the opponent gets to pick the card to sacrifice but seeing as its instant speed for cheap mana and they all have to sacrifice, it packs a bit of a punch. The more mono colored decks you see in your meta the worse this gets but it seems nice to potentially make multiple opponents each sacrifice their commanders.
Unexpectedly Absent it can serve as a tuck effect. It can target anything at instant speed is part of what I love about this effect. You can catch someone about to tutor for something and tuck something in response or even just push something important to someone 5 cards down at instant speed. The versatility is in what all it can catch and if they are doing a search, we can tuck something for 2 mana. I view it as like an additional Oblation.
Ghostway its nice to dodge a wrath. It doesnt do a lot else but it saves time in recovery. We often dont cause the wraths to happen due to our board unless you are really swarming hard with the rebels. I like this a lot more than other options to try to recover from wraths because if someone casts a tuck or exile wrath, this is the only one that really works right.
Lapse of Certainty its a good way to stall game ending effects and buy time for answering threats or trying to kill the player trying to go off. It can work as a surprise answer to combo decks or to stall a wrath that comes at a key time you dont want. It can be a handy trick for sure but its just a one turn stall so its sort of dependent on what it will work against.
Oblation versatile removal. It gets anything in play for one low cost. The draw downside is mostly ok in comparison to getting rid of something problematic.
Rootborn Defenses its cheap to buy and it can shrug off wraths. Its an alright budget card but generally speaking, I would rather see Ghostway or Faith's Reward used over it.
White Sun's Zenith CAT ARMY!!!! This thing makes a lot of power in tokens at instant speed. It is one of the primary swarm tactics to end games with. I generally try not to use it until I can go off hard.
Faith's Reward it can be a good move to recover from wrath effects. The biggest setup you can get is to recover from a large scale sweeper like Oblivion Stone with this effect or reset after an Armageddon effect. When looking at this against regular wraths it tends to be inferior to Ghostway due to the fact that Faith's Reward cannot be used against tuck wraths and exile wraths.
Ray of Distortion its not cheap to use but it gives the option of two spot remove effects. Its sort of clunky but considering its a draw / go deck that is short on card draw it can be useful to consider. Its really clunky though...
Return to Dust solid exile removal. You can use it in a pinch on opponents turns or use it on your own for a larger result. The fact that it exiles can be incredibly useful as it shuts out the option of recursion and cuts through to indestructible artifacts.
Miraculous Recovery its a solid rez spell considering it can rez any creature at instant speed. It is a bit underwhelming though if you dont run a bit heavier on the non rebel creatures though.
Banishing Stroke it tucks anything at instant speed. Its sort of expensive at 6 mana but we play draw / go anyways so we can usually afford to pay it if necessary. The miracle effect on it can be useful if you are juggling it or just randomly when tearing it off the top.
---SORCERY---
Steelshaper's Gift its solid in an equipment build as it very cheaply gets an equipment of your choice to hand.
Gift of Estates lands into hand mean that you can keep playing them out for turns to come. Inflating hand size can also be turned into card draw with some effects like Scroll Rack and Teferi's Puzzle Box.
Martial Coup it can wrath the board and leave you with a bunch of tokens. The problem with it is really that it is incredibly slow though. Its nice though to recover from a wrath with a big wave of tokens though.
Planar Birth this can be used with mass LD to recover as the multicolored decks wont recover as well or against mass LD to recover the landbase. The key here is that its cheap to cast, and opponents wont get nearly as much value from it as we will.
Revoke Existence its cheap and it deals with something permanently. Its sorcery speed though and spot removal at that. I would only really look at it if you are having issues with opponents recuring their toys a lot or indestructible targets.
Dust to Dust its nice that it exiles two targets but it is generally just less versatile than Return to Dust for not much less mana. I wouldnt suggest running it unless you really start having some issues with artifacts and indestructible ones at that.
Entreat the Angels this can open up a big wave of ass kicking angels. This is best utilized with topdeck manipulation such as Sensei's Divining Top and or CARD]Scroll Rack[/CARD] to juggle this and draw it as needed. Sensei's Divining Top in specific can juggle and draw it at instant speed allowing for an instant speed token swarm that hits at end of turn.
Idyllic Tutor its a solid tutor depending on how many good enchantments you have and what your priority with tutoring for them is. They go to hand which is good but it comes down to what sort of how highly you value your enchantments and if there is one you are often looking for.
Retribution of the Meek it wraths big creatures and leaves the rebels mostly alone. Its cheap to cast as well. The downside is that it lacks versatility if you needed to get small creatures as well it doesn't really have options to it. It does duck our own creatures though which is useful.
Survival Cache it has net card draw to it and small lifegain. Its a small little cantrip effect but it has net card draw to it so I think its kind of cool. Its rather small scale though so there is nothing really huge about it and three mana for its effect is a little heavy I think.
Armageddon mass LD, there isn't a lot to say about it other than make sure that you are ok with running this style of tactic before delving into building around it. Its not something I would really lightly splash around but its possible to just add one or two LD effects to a list and run with it and just wait for a good moment to hit it.
Cataclysm being that we are more of a small utility style of swarm deck, I just dont really see how this could be that useful to us. I would personally run the straight Armageddon effects and leave this one be for this style of deck. You ideally want a big centrally used beater commander to get away with this.
Decree of Justice with this card, I like 98% of the time always use its cycle option for instant speed soldiers. The surprise factor of this card is what you want as we can follow it up with Mirror Entity as a wincon and puch people for lethal. Very very very rarely will you ever consider making angels with this card as the better option.
Ravages of War a very expensive to purchase Armageddon effect. Run it only if you have tested and like the Armageddon style of builds and only after including the other runnable Armageddon effects. If you have the money to spare, adding another one of these effects to your deck is huge since we lack the ability to tutor for them and our card draw is not great.
Wrath of God generally speaking, I tend to encourage people to run other wraths other than these four mana options. If you have issues with hyper fast decks like Edric, take a look at adding 4 mana wraths but generally speaking, they lack any sort of versatility and I often dont suggest using them. This is at least stronger than Day of Judgement because of the no regeneration clause but I dont suggest running either of them.
Conqueror's Pledge its a slower card but it gives a lot of tokens for the mana. It can be kicked too for about twice the mana for twice the effect. Its nothing really special but if you are hurting for token production its not bad.
Increasing Devotion its a slower effect but it has flashback and makes a lot of guys in both waves of it. I tend to stay away from sorcery speed token spawn if I can but its not bad if you are looking for cost effective ways to swarm the field.
Hallowed Burial in a pinch, blowing out the creatures is necessary. This deck's objective is to keep living so if someone is over extending what you can defend against this is worth considering. I often like to set it up by end of turn tutoring for Changeling Hero and hiding Lin Sivvi from this effect. It still has a chance to backfire though if someone has spot removal to take the hero out though so think about this before attempting to do it. Its also good to run sacrifice outlets to protect Lin Sivvi from this.
Rout the fact that it can wrath the board at instant speed as a surprise is a nice option to have. Generally speaking, its hard to champion Lin Sivvi with Changeling Hero and do this in one action and it gives away your play if you champion her much more than immediately before this resolves.
Austere Command its good to be able to sweep some of the noncreature things and generally speaking, the 4+ mana sweeper option leaves us mostly intact which is nice.
Catastrophe its a versatile wrath that can clear lands if you are ahead or creatures if you are behind. I would not include it if you are not willing to use it on land on average though. The intention behind this card should be to use it for land with a fallback plan of using it on creatures.
Terminus same as Hallowed Burial but with a miracle option that can be set up potentially with Sensei's Divining Top.
Storm Herd it costs a lot of mana but it brings a lot of guys with as well. It ideally works best with something like Vedalken Orrery to just surprise flash a giant token wave in but it can be slow rolled. Expect it to provoke every sort of wrath imaginable though when slow rolling something like this. It works well against playgroups that run less control and wraths though because they have less chance of removing it.
---PLANESWALKERS---
Ajani Goldmane his -1 ability can be useful for swarm tactics. Generally speaking though, it takes too long to really ramp up the swarm in EDH. His ability to act as an anthem back in standard doesnt really transition nearly as well as in multiplayer EDH you have to expect more wraths and make your move much faster. Most of his abilities just dont fit but his -1 can act as an alright anthem effect.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant creatures every turn and the option of possibly hitting her ult which generally makes people unhappy. Its hard to defend her though so expect a lot of hate and difficulty keeping her afloat against multiple opponents.
Elspeth Tirel she spawns larger waves of tokens every other turn and has some lifegain options which are handy against the swarm style of decks. She has options to wrath too which can be useful to have access to. She also tends to draw a lot less hate since her abilities aren't as scary since her ult isn't game ending or anything.
Gideon Jura he has a few useful tricks in his arsenal. He can taunt opponents creatures into walking into combat trick rebels like Defiant Vanguard or use his minus ability to kill off creatures that Whipcorder taps down. He has several useful tricks to him and the fact that he doesn't have an ult often decreases the amount of hate he draws. He works well as a beater as well if people are all wrath happy too.
Elspeth, Sun's Champion big token waves as a +1 and her -3 ability misses most of our rebels. She has a really nice set of abilities for this deck and her ult is a really really nice anthem. She is probably the best walker for this deck printed to date.
Karn Liberated exile removal of any card. Its hard to keep him around but occasionally you can use him for a few turns. My general assumption though is that he will use his -3 the turn he comes in and get mauled by the table though. I have literally seen people Cryptic Command to tap creatures just to swing in and kill him.
---LAND---
Buried Ruin its a nice recovery option and its on a land so it doesn't really need to be used immediately to still get really good value from it. There are lots of very useful artifacts in this deck that I like having access to.
Emeria, the Sky Ruin random free rez has some solid uses. Generally speaking, its not that impressive though even when its active as most of my creatures are rebels. Its not bad though by any means but I dont build my deck around getting this or getting it online as most of the time its value generation is really small.
High Market sac outlets are nice to have. They can help get Lin Sivvi out or stop theft from happening. I wish there was a functional reprint of this land as its just so useful for so many decks.
Kor Haven its a nice deterrent. Since we are essentially a draw / go style of deck its easy to keep up and available. Its also very useful against protection from white swords and such as we can keep them off of us with the mazes.
Mistveil Plains its useful for tucking since it can tuck things for cheaper than Lin Sivvi and it can tuck things other than rebels. It can be helpful when defending against things like Chancellor of the Spires effects assuming you are even the best target.
Mystifying Maze another maze effect. Its useful to have against pro white swords and such and since the deck is essentially draw / go its easy to keep up and available if needed. It still taps for mana too so I like it.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx This deck often has quite a bit of board presence through its rebels so this land is a nice one to just generate some solid mana for us. It still taps for colorless so the downside of running it is relatively low all around.
Strip Mine you never know when someone will drop a problematic land into play. Having this handy for Cabal Coffers and friends is useful. The number of land answer lands like this sort of dictate how much of a problem utility and mass mana generating lands are for you. I run relatively light on them since I am not running sword setups so I dont need to worry about mazes much and outside of someone really abusing a coffers, I dont really care that much.
Temple of the False God it ramps and its a land. The only real downside is if you end up opening handing this and getting stuck on lands. Outside of that, it works alright as some ramp.
Tower of the Magistrate it screws with opponents equipment which can be very useful. Its fun to shoot down a Lightning Greaves equip or if someone tries sliding in with a sword you can take out their protection and deal with them then.
Thespian's Stage useful land to do whatever is needed. It taps for mana immediately and its only real downside is that its colorless mana when it starts out. Its very useful to turn into a utility land or land that taps for multiple mana though.
Winding Canyons allows us to flash in creatures. This is occasionally helpful if your plan is to replay Lin Sivvi as it can keep her out of some wrath situations and allow you to keep options up or bluff them.
Change Log
03-03-2012
CUTS:
03-06-2012
03-14-2012
CUTS:
ADDS:
03-19-2012
CUTS:
ADDS:
03-28-2012
CUTS:
ADDS:
04-06-2012
04-23-2012
07-28-2012
09-13-2012
12-05-2012
12-10-2012
02-15-2013
03-21-2013
07-30-2013
08-08-2013
09-24-2013
10-23-2013
10-30-2013
03-18-2014
04-02-2014
07-30-2014
1-22-2015
2-03-2015
3-2-2015
3-16-2015
3/30/2015 (The following changes followed the change to tuck which this deck required less redundancy in tutoring rebels afterwards)
7/6/2015
The Alters
Acknowledgements
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[Modern] Allies
Also.. I need to work on some of my non rebel things. I should probably pick up another 2-3 art/enchant removal as well as another piece of equipment. Eternal Dragon wasn't impressive either so it might turn into like a Coat of Arms or something...
Ghostway might also be worth investing in in here. I also considered Eldrazi Monument briefly and I think it could be solid as well. I will get back to the list later. I have to clean for now as my Mother in law is coming for a visit... joy...
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[Modern] Allies
The Commandments of EDH
My thrax is combo heavy playout. This deck is not really using combo unless you want to call Mirror Entity mass pump a combo.
Some changes to the list:
CUTS:
- Ramosian Captain it is essentially one of the more expensive of the rebel tutor creatures. The 2/2 first strike body doesnt really make up for the expensive use tutor. I want either a decent creature or a decently costed tutor and this is sort of a bad bastardization of the two.
- Ramosian Revivalist since the commander of the deck can tuck the rebels and then I can re tutor them I just havent found this needed so far. I could be wrong but I just dont see this working so great so far for me.
-Eternal Dragon not impressed at all. I dont know what I was hoping for when I added him but he wasnt fun to draw and I have better things to do than recur him. If I had a deck with less things to do I could possibly see using him but I always have something to be doing in this deck.
- Jhovall Queen She was... ehhh ok I wasnt real impressed but with the playtesting where I did tutor her up I had wished I had tutored into Cho-Arrim Bruiser instead. Tapping things down is solid when it comes to connecting with swrods and what not. I think I will try him out instead.
- Rout I found that I sort of swarm the board a lot. The only time I would really feel I need a wrath it seems so far is against a token deck. Generally speaking though I have the capability to out creature other people with rebels. I will try running a wrath less for now and see how it goes.
- Sundering Titan I just wasnt really impressed... he is ok but not really what I wanted when I drew him. I would rather something that might end the game at that cost in this deck and I just didnt get that vibe off of him in this list. Also I have relatively no ways to really abuse him to the point of making him good in here.
- Karmic Guide I have this feeling that this deck isnt going to be as much about rezing a big fatty back into play. I dont have much for ways to abuse the Guide either. As much as I love this card in so many decks I didnt get the vibe that it belonged in here. If I ever dropped it in to rez a rebel it would probably be a bad move so meh.
ADDS:
+ Sun Titan additional rez outlet. He can rez a lot of the rebels which is really nice as well as most of the equipment too. He is a great beater to top it off so he seems like a great add to me.
+ Rings of Brighthearth I didnt think about it at first but paying 2 additional to get a second activation out of the rebels seems worth trying out at least. It is a good card.+ Cho-Arrim Bruiser I want to try him in the place of the queen. I might end up just not worrying about having a big beater rebel but he seems like he could be incredibly good with some of the swords and what not. The fact that he gets to tap down 2 creatures on attacking could be great for connecting for some damage.
+ Knight of the White Orchid I realized when I was on my way out last night that I didnt have him in my list so I put him in my list on my way out. He is solid.
+ Solemn Simulacrum how did this not make my list.... odd well fixed.
+ Return to Dust good versatile removal. It can pick up 2 targets which is great or I can instant cast it in a pinch.
+ Enlightened Tutor I considered a few options for this last add. I think this gives me a good versatile option. I considered either ramp or art / enchant removal but this sort of gives me the option of either.
I was tempted to put some flashy effects in however I think I need to work on the basics for now and with more game play I will figure out how my needs need to change what I am running.
EDIT: ehhhh it suddenly occurs to me that my original list didnt have Sundering Titan and I just sort of randomly included him... well I might have to work some kinks out on this edit...
EDIT 2: well I cut rings back out... it might be a little bit winmore...
EDIT 3: ehhhh I am off by 1 card again... I think I might just throw a Wayfarer's Bauble in for now. I need more ramp anyways.
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[Modern] Allies
on another note amrou kithkin and zealot il-vec are fantastic with quietus spike. much hilarity insues....
distorting lens is great with weenie protection like the gliders and the bringer's
also, where is the pariah/pariah's shield effects for cho?
explorer's scope ehhhh I havent ever been a huge fan of it... in my opinion it is usually just a worse sword effect as the value is questionable.
quietus spike it might be worth playing... I was a bit less certain earlier but there are a few decent evasive creatures I have access to. The deathtouch is always useful as well on these little creatures.
distorting lens ehhh... I am not going to worry about it too much. I see a lot of 3 color commanders in my meta though and the 2 exile guys catch a lot of them which I really like. I will probably just let them pick up the value that they can and not worry about further things.
pariah/pariah's shield purely defensive lock. I dont like that. These sort of things fall apart at the worst times.
The spike is probably the most likely of the bunch that I might run. I was also considering Strata Scythe but who knows...
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[Modern] Allies
Thank You Rivenor/Miraculous Recovery Studios!
GGGSKamahl's Band of Monstosities SGGG
RRRSFreaki-Kiki, The Goblin DoucheSRRR
BBGGNath, Raper of Hands and Spewer of Tokens!GGBB
BUGDamia, Sage of AnswersBUG
WIPs
BBBXiahou Dun, the Bitter Stax Enabling BastardBBB
On Break
BBBSKagemaro, First to RetireSBBB
BBBThe Walking DeadBBB
UUUSTeferi Combo PrimerSUUU
Since you're playing aggro, Armageddon and friends are nice. (Not very casual though ._.)
GRRWHazezon Tamar (Valakut)GRRW
UKami of the Crescent Moon (
Group Hug)UUHeidar, Rimewind Master [Mini-Primer]U
WKemba, Kha Regent (Stax)W
GEzuri, Renegade Leader [Primer]G
I really like her so far in my testing but I only managed like three 1v1 games so far. I think you could go a ways with her and I really love the sort of draw / go style of control she lends but I don't really know as of right now how competitive she could become. I would say one thing though. Just because she has a few combo options available doesn't mean that you should include them. I know someone before me who ran her and ran the infinite life combo. Whenever he executed it he died first thing after it. People get really pissed off by it and it doesn't win the game so I would honestly say it isn't worth doing.
The biggest issue I see with rebels so far is they tend to require a lot of bodies to really do much. It is tricky not to overextend them because people will probably be wrathing you. I need more gameplay time though before I can comment much more though. One of the biggest percs though is that rebels can tutor into each other so getting tucked which is one of the hardest things for mono white is minimized significantly.
I feel like the Cartographer is a bit slow to be honest. At 4 mana I feel like I should be recieving more than a single mana.
As for the geddon... I would probably go with Catastrophe between the options but even then the rebels really need a manabase to multiply so it can be hard to blow everything up.
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[Modern] Allies
Also, no Children of Korlis?
Amrou Seekers is a decent card. But my question is when would you rather have it than Zealot il-Vec? Intimidate is generally speaking much worse than shadow. So the big difference here is the 2/2 body instead of a 1/1 body. In my opinion the Zealot just sort of one ups him in too many ways though especially with the option to redirect damage to a creature which is good versatility. In my mind it just comes down to the fact that if I want something to swing with equipment the Zealot just feels better in most situations. I dont find that I need a designated beater that often so I would rarely need both in play at the same time. With more playtesting it could be added but mainly if I have problems with someone using premium removal on the Zealot that exiles him.
Children of Korlis I don't see a lot of big non lethal non general damage in my meta. If you were to see a lot of that situation I could see it being good however it does nothing to commander damage, and unless it is some large non lethal force I just don't see much result using this. I suppose there is a chance you might like to use it turn after turn to turn back 20 or so power worth of guys but I just cant think of a lot of situations which this would work for me. I might need to playtest him at some point but I feel like Rebels are already very defensive in nature.
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[Modern] Allies
Bound in Silence is strictly worse than Prison Term aside from maybe the double white I suppose.
I think that both Nim Deathmantle and Sword of Feast and Famine are underwhelming here. Deathmantle is far too susceptible to all sorts of removal and mandates that you leave the 4 mana untapped. Which wouldn't be too bad later on considering there aren't many mana sinks in mono white, but it just seems bleh.
Sword is nice to connect, untap, and dump your mana into winding canyons, but at that point you're just encouraging yourself to overextend.
I've always liked Steel Hellkite in Mono W as a win con, or a one sided removal.
This is also a deck that's begging for Elesh Norn, however I'm sure you've thought of that already.
Finally mono white control can only really make up for its lack of card advantage by use of wraths. Hallowed burial is amazing as you pointed out is amazing. Austere command is much the same. I don't however see what the point is for most of the rebels that also tutor for additional rebels. Since they also have to tap, it's not like you can attack and then pull out another creature from your deck. I've never run Lin-Sivvi, but I think you need to up the mass removal count by at least three or four.
There's just no way to stop the big threats that you need to stop while using such little mass and targeted removal. Since your creatures don't do much controlling either I can just see your little rebels staring at the opposing army's with no hope.
The deck has few ways of protecting itself and few ways of really rushing damage down opponents throats. I think one of these two things needs to really be addressed.
I actually didn't notice that it was a tribal enchantment. Good looking out
This deck is quite a bit different from the usual mono white decks in the fact that it relies on a bunch of terrible dudes to sort of just random swing in FTW.
Bound in Silence as Ash pointed out it is a rebel card which is tutorable and recurrable. It is one of the best points of removal that this commander has.
Nim Deathmantle I havent had enough time to test it but this deck sort of plays draw / go style. The upside of this card is that it can be used to sort of psudo mass rez my rebels as I can trigger it for each creature that dies. I should easily be able to rez like 2 guys off of this.
Sword of Feast and Famine I have TONS of mana dumps in this deck. I can swing in and when the trigger goes on the stack tutor into a few guys then untap and get ready to tutor into more guys. This bugger is nice
Steel Hellkite it is an option but as far as wincons go I think I am better off with either a mass buff or an equipment. He is alright but I think in this deck I would have to consider him almost strictly removal. His pump isnt so great for this deck.
Elesh Norn considered it... I think Coat of Arms / Eldrazi Monument will be better for this deck though. I dont have much for ways to tutor into any of them however Elesh is sort of a smaller buff and removal spell that I like more in creature abuse types of decks.
wrath effects: great effects however this deck sort of relies on just multiplying every turn. I found that it is very defensive in nature with a lot of great tutor targets in the rebel toolbox. I need more testing before I can really solidify this but I find it hard to expect that much other than a token swarm deck is going to out body me.
As for defending itself... so far I havent had any problems with that. I have a lot of great defensive stuff. I have some guys to exile creatures outright, I have creatures that have psudo deathtouch, ones that turn damage back on creatures, I have creatures who take no damage and I have just bodies for days to block with. If anything this deck defends itself nicely. My problems currently are killing people and wrath effects against me.
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[Modern] Allies
Some of the more powerful token makers could be good, since your general searches out Mirror Entity. Martial Coup seems too powerful not to play anyways.
edit: Hm, I guess you are already playing a few of them.
This deck is meant to be for multiplayer. It just so happened that last Friday was a draft (which I hate...) so instead I played some side games against a buddy of mine who needs some EDH practice. He is primarily accustomed to 1v1 games of magic so I used my untested new deck against his. Generally speaking though no I dont do 1v1 games. This is probably the first one I have done in like 6 months or so.
I agree that token makers can be decent in this deck. I am currently running White Sun's Zenith and Decree of Justice both of which I like because of their instant speed. This sort of deck playes a bit of draw/go so I really like the versatility of just hitting an army of guys into play when I need it. That being said I am not so keen no the sorcery speed equivalents as they lack the surprise factor. Martial Coup is a great card but so far I have been trying to wrath a little less in this deck due to the tendency for rebels to sort of multiply over time. Mirror Entity really is a great finisher but I have also been trying to experiment with some alternate wincons mostly through equipment currently.
I came up with a few more changes for tonights games which will hopefully work out for me.
Batterskull -> Quietus Spike I really like batterskull due to the fact that it can easily make creatures titan sized. The vigilance is amazing on rebels as well giving me the option to attack + block + totor with the creature all in one. That being said though it is expensive to move arround and I dont really see it having a huge game winning approach to it. The spike will do a lot more for ending games and deathtouch is still solid on defense.
Crovax, Ascendant Hero -> Eldrazi Monument Once I get going I can easily pick up 2-3 creatures in a turn with the rebels so sacing one a turn to the monument should be relatively minimal. I doubt I can rely on the monument sticking long however it is great until it goes. I figure it is worth trying out. Chrovax just has such a small impact. I love how I can bounce him but he doesnt kick in hard enough in my opinion.
Nim Deathmantle -> Strata Scythe giving up survivability for raw power. We will see how it does but for now I feel like I need a way to actually accomplish something which the Scythe does nicely.
Scout's Warning -> Ghostway Scout's Warning is just sort of ok outside of flashing in my commander when resetting. Ghostway on the other hand gives me a wrath resistance which is greatly needed.
Remember the Fallen -> Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite I was hoping that Remember the Fallen would be a decent way to get artifacts back to hand but I just feel like it is probably better to keep moving. The card seems to sit dead in my hand for quite a bit of the time. Also it doesnt really help much with reusing rebels due to the fact that I can just tuck and re tutor them. Elesh Norn gives me another possible wincon as well as some control against opposing agro / token.
EDIT: also... I am not sure if that Eldrazi Monument should actually be Coat of Arms or not... I might have to think it over a bit more...
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[Modern] Allies
So to get started I sort of have a slow game from the start. I have 4 lands in my opening hand and several responsive spells. I topdeck a Lightning Greaves on turn 2 which I drop in and drop my commander on turn 3. I spend the next several turns playing draw / go just putting a few guys into play. Hazezon hits a T&N into Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite + Primeval Titan which blows my board out. He decides from there to swing at me with a few tokens he has laying about because all I have left is my 0/1 commander in play. I Oblation his Elesh Norn as I wont be crawling out of the current situation with her in play and chump off a token that dies.
From here Scion slams a Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker stealing the Primetime and putting greaves on it to swing out. Next turn he purposely swings it into a deathtoucher so nobody would homeward path it.
We are all focusing on killing bolas at this point. Nath manages to swing decently at him which would have taken 5 loyalty off of him but Scion answers one of his threats and only takes a point off of bolas. At the EOT for Nath I tutor into Changeling Hero championing a 1/1 rebel. On my turn I drop a Whipkeeper from my hand and slap the greaves onto him and tap down the only blocker for Scion. From here I swing the last 5 damage into bolas and kill him. Hazezon takes the opportunity to kill Liliana on his turn with Scion's shields down.
Now is when it got stupid... Scion had tutored with liliana into Rite of Replication which he kicks onto a Vigor... stupid. We all spend a turn just sort of getting ready to get blown the hell up. Scion swings them into Nath who has the most wraths between us. Nath cant defend himself from dying so he sort of screws with us by mass blocking and putting a ton of counters on them...
Scion ends his turn and EOT I tutor for Bound in Silence and lockdown the only blocker Scion has left... it seems like he keeps giving me the opportunity to do this... on my turn I finally topdeck my 6th land.... it is like turn 15 and I finally hit #6... god it was lame. I drop Quietus Spike and equip it to Changeling Hero and swing in at Scion for like 8 or so damage. Then he looses another like 13 to the spike. Hazezon decides that it is in his best interest to capitalize on Scion being low and finishes him off with a few 8/8 Godsire tokens he has left over.
It comes down to just me and Hazazon now. I drop a Sword of Feast and Famine I had been holding for a few turns now and equip it. Like all of Hazazon's creatures are green so he cant block it. I strap it to the changeling and swing in for 6 + half his life which was another 10+ ish damage.
Hazazon mass multiplies as last turn he dropped his commander as well so he has tokens everywhere... Luckily he can only swing at me for like 18 or something. I have gained a lot of life off of the lifelink champion so I am still at like 32 at this point. My turn and I drop Eldrazi Monument and finish the game off.
It was funny as it was a game that I had absolutely no business winning but I just randomly pulled off key moves at the right time to push the game in my favor. It was odd as on turn 15+ when the game ended I was at 6 lands with no mana stones... That might have to be looked into but who knows...
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[Modern] Allies
GAME 1: 5 player game where opponents going arround the table starting to my left are: Hazezon Tamar, Nin, the Pain Artist, Scion of the Ur-Dragon, and Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. Hazezon is playing token swarm where he often drops haste + huge buff when his tokens come in to completely smash a few players. Nin is playing sort of a broken combo deck in the fact that he hates infinites so he does strange things to try to Ignite Memories for a ton of copies without ever doing anything infinitely in there. Scion tends to 1-2 shot people and his utility is brutal. He is mostly playing just 5c goodstuff though with too high of manacurve on most of his stuff though. And Teferi is well playing a deck mostly just constructed from the top 50 cards page...
We get going to this game, Scion drops a turn 1 Sol Ring, Turn 2 Skyshroud Claim, Turn 3 Gilded Lotus, Turn 4 Scion with lolz mana everywhere. Luckily for us Teferi Hinders Scion coming into play lol so he goes for the slow track instead.
I get going sort of slow and totally play mistake the **** out of my deck. I get a simulacrum out on turn 4 rather than rebel tutoring but then turn 5 I forget to rebel tutor or activate my Wayfarer's Bauble so I look like a dumbass. I then end up tutoring up and using Lawbringer to stop Nin from shooting Stuffy Doll for tons of damage instead of using Zealot il-Vec like a smart player... bahhhh bad plays!
Anyways the game went on for a while and I managed to save my commander from an All is Dust by using my changeling to cover for her. I then used the mana I had left to tuck him when she came back into play which was nice. A few more turns went past and Scion swing a ton of dudes in at Hazezon and I used that opportunity to acitvate Winding Canyons and spit out Mirror Entity and another dude from my hand. From here I slapped Scion for 40 using **** creatures and the Entity.
Hazezon didnt really like me doing this so he followed this up and killed my entity (just to the gy so it was ok). Next turn I dropped a Marshal's Anthem kicked once to rez the entity and hit hazezon for another like 10 or 15 damage putting him at 6. He dropped his hand into play for blockers but was still 2 shy of being able to block me so I still on the following turn swing at him with tons of dudes killing him.
At this point nin had about ohhhh 30 or 40 cards in hand... I knew I was dead but I was just doing what I could before dying. Nin went off throwing 13 copies of Ignite Memories at me which hit my lark in hand a lot of times... killing me on the spot. I was amused when Teferi revealed his hand to be 2 lands and skullclamp for his 13 copies... I think he took like 4 damage.
At this point Teferi just sort of scooped because he was trying to work out a trade mid game and people were getting annoyed.
GAME 2: Same players - Teferi player who went off to trade and such. Nin swapped to Mayael the Anima and Scion to Rhys the Redeemed.
This game just started off sort of slow for me unfortunately. Rhys dropped into play on turn 2, Turn 3 he dropped Elvish Archdruid, Turn 4 he dropped Seedborn Muse. Turn 6 I think we all died when he just dropped Elesh Norn into play with like 35 dudes.... Unfortunately we were just all too agro based with too few answers in that setup. I moved to thrax after this game and pissed everyone off when I combod out to punish them all lol.
The games were a lot of fun and sort of showed me some things need to change.
CUTS:
Cho-Manno, Revolutionary too slow and everyone has evasion on fricking everything. I never tutor him and he is almost never used here. People dont use non evasive attackers that dont swarm. It generally has evasion or is swarming.
Duplicant mehhhhhh I have some instant speed things to do essentially this. I dont need a creature at sorcery speed when I can just threaten to do this. I would rather have an instant speed option if possible.
Lightning Greaves I never needed these. My rebels chain together so tucking isnt that big of a problem. Also I tend to be tapped out off of casting my commander so meh.
Eldrazi Monument -> Darksteel Plate I just have a hard time really using the Monument in here. It was good on paper but it sits in my hand a lot. I would rather just play the plate and have a hard to remove guy I can block with.
ADDS:
Mind Stone I need more fast early mana stones. This gets me some mana to move arround with in the early game and I like how it can cycle off. This deck plays a lot of draw / go so I should be able to pop it off for a card in a sweeper.
Relic of Progenitus Some basic graveyard hate. I can tuck my rebels before blowing this which is nice. I probably will need more than this in here but I like how it cycles itself which is nice. For now I will start light but Stonecloaker might be soon after here.
Umezawa's Jitte it lends a bit more utility removal which is nice. I have been wanting something I can manipulate for some multi kills decently and I think this will to some point help against some swarm style of decks. It also gives some lifegain options which can be ok.
EDIT: Ohhh and I filled in my landbase finally. I have a few tweeks probably to do to it yet but it isn't just sort of a gaping hole anymore.
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[Modern] Allies
My own current list is trying to be a bit more agro / toolbox utility based. Unfortunately most of the rebels are really underwhelming from a power perspective so I am forced to use most of them as toolbox utility as well as bodies for Mirror Entity / equipment. While I am not completely against combos I find that most of them are using sort of bad cards in mono white. I don't like cards that outside of the combo are mostly dead which is why I don't really bother much with them in here.
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[Modern] Allies
Karmic Guide is an amazing creature, I just dont like it as much in this list. If I pay 5 mana to recover a rebel at sorcery speed generally speaking that was sort of a meh play. I love it in my Bant list but in here it is a lot less impressive. If I can rez a nice big non rebel it is really cool but I don't run that many big non rebel creatures in here.
While running the combos is a viable option I really don't like how most of the combo pieces work on their own. I have had a fun time running it as somewhat of a utility control based agro deck. Not saying that I refuse to run some combo but as of now I am not too impressed by the options available.
Just sort of a fast swap I wanted to try out. I was looking at Karn Liberated and he seems like he could be a lot of fun. This deck is already incredibly defensive in nature so I think I could actually put some decent defense up for him. I think I might try swapping him in for Umezawa's Jitte for a bit.
I ended up doing 2 test games last night of 1v1 again... I dont know how it keeps happening that I get these games with this deck but whatever. My opponent after playing 2 games against him I looked at his deck and he was running 35 lands with 3 mana stones with Kaervek the Merciless as his commander... I mostly goldfished the games however I learned game 2 that Grafdigger's Cage is a total nightmare for me. He Demonic Tutored it on turn 2 and slammed it down before I could activate my commander for the first time. Luckily I had Elspeth and Mentor of the Meek so I sort of ran him down using the two of them instead.
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[Modern] Allies
Luckily for me I already had Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero and Mirror Entity so the rest of them were actually fairly cheap in comparison to pickup. Looking to make some upgrades yet in the list but I have been very happy playing this deck for being a mono white list.
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[Modern] Allies
Task Force
Outrider en-Kor
Miren, the Moaning Well or
Animal Boneyard
Target Task force a bunch w/ Outrider, sac to one of those lands, yay.
Also, Endless Horizons was always really kind to me in Lin-Sivvi. I can see being scared of enchantment hate, but even insuring the next three-four land drops is huge.
Torpor Orb also made my opponents play fair. Brass Squire made the cut for me as well, but I also played a ton of equipment and Puresteel Paladin.
Good luck with the Rebels! May you never face down a Cursed Totem.